Macaulay’s Children

When the British fully took over India, they set upon establishing an intermediary race of Indians whom they could entrust with their work at middle and lower levels of government and administration. Again,  in the words of Macaulay: “We must at present do our best to form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern, a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellects. ”1

 

Most of our pre-independence leaders belonged to this class and at independence not only the British education system, but the whole of their constitutional, judicial, legal and administrative system was blindly adopted and remains in effect even today virtually unchanged. Our post-independence leaders too, having been educated and groomed under this system, show little or no true appreciation or even understanding of the genius of India – its great culture, its Sanatana – because eternally true – Dharma and its soul.

 

After the founding of the Democratic Secular Republic of India on 26th January, 1950 and  the passing away of Saradar Patel in December, 1950 all the political power of the country got concentrated in the hands of Pundit Nehru who, having had a completely Western upbringing and education since his childhood, grew to imbibe the European view of human life and developed fondness for its ideals of democracy, socialism and secularism.

 

The Western Conception of Man

In the Western conception man is a reasoning animal, a thinking, feeling and willing natural existence – a mental son of physical nature. In the liberal Western European view, a culture of his mental capacities is the true meaning of education. The socialists and communists look upon man as a political, social and economic being and his education as a training that will fit him to be an efficient, productive and well disciplined member of the society and the State.

 

A mental ideal state is the summit of man’s ascension and all movement towards an agreed upon ideal state can be termed progress. Reason is the summit of man’s faculties and the basis of all scientific advancements.  Man must be guided by reason and not by instincts and desires and passions if he is to move towards an ideal state. This has been the burden of all the Western attempts towards perfection – even though its serious thinkers have always had the intuition that though reason may lead man towards some kind of ideal state, it can never actually take him there.  The question is why it must be so? The Indian conception of man answers this.

 

The Indian Conception of Man

In the Indian conception man is a soul enwrapped in mind, life and body – a conscious manifestation in nature of the Spirit which is regarded as the highest term of existence. India has always distinguished and cultivated in man a mental (intellectual, aesthetic, ethical), a vital (dynamic, practical and hedonistic) and a physical being but all these have been only as powers of a soul that manifests through them and grows with their growth but at the summit of its ascent arises to something greater than all – a spiritual being – in which she has found man’s ultimate divine manhood.  It is only by an opening and surrender to this true and highest and deepest source of its being that humanity can rise to a condition of true perfection beyond all mental ideals. The ancient Indian culture set for itself this sublime goal and strove to move its whole body – individuals and collectivity – towards this goal as effectively as possible. In the course of its pursuit since times immemorial, a suitable edifice of mental, vital, physical and spiritual culture got built which supported this pursuit and was in turn supported by it. It is this edifice of spiritual culture which has been called Sanatana Dharma.

 

Reason is only a middle term of man’s being and – although very useful as a tool of the spirit in chastening man’s animal nature – cannot, by its unaided strength, lift man beyond itself. In fact, any society which strives to be predominantly guided by reason cannot even sustain itself. Unless supported by a lofty idealism pointing towards the spirit, a society based on reason will tend to sink in reality – even if not in appearance as in the case of modern societies – to the animal level with its attendant upsurge of animal appetites and acute selfishness.

 

The present secular media and institutions are full of rational people who, never ever having even suspected that reason was not the last word of the highest wisdom or the highest faculty available to man, make an unbridled use of it to prescribe panacea for the resolution of pressing problems facing the Country. They do not realize that their perception may be neither deep enough nor wide enough to enable them to understand what they are talking about. In such a muddled state, the result – with no true or deeper perception to check them – is a naked dance of biases, prejudices and selfishness masquerading as national service, honesty, renunciation, etc.  And all this is already happening when we are not even fully developed like the U.S. – the commonly agreed upon and unquestionable goal put forward by all our vociferous economic and political leaders and thinkers. It is not difficult to guess what is in store for us and our culture if we were to continue on the road traced out for us by Macaulay’s Children whose story we now continue after this necessary digression.

 

The Economic and Political Miscalculations

In 1951, our country, with its leaders drawing inspiration from the Russian economic model, embarked upon a course of planned economic development which took the form of five year plans. Our leaders of the time believed that with the help of Science, Socialism and Economic Planning and the Indian people’s own government – after seven centuries of most painful subjection to foreign rule – they will be able to take the country to an ideal state superior to anything that might have been achieved in the ancient past. The initial concentration of the economic planning was on the construction of big multipurpose hydro-electric power projects, steel plants, a network of roads, etc. The big steel plants and huge hydro-electric power projects like Bhakhara-Nangal dam were declared to be the true and fitting places of worship for all forward looking spirits in the new India.

 

The concentration on infrastructure and heavy industries coupled with stiff exchange controls, Licence Raj and other ill conceived and misdirected efforts at detailed “regulation” – which it may be more apt to call “strangulation” – of the economic system stifled all initiative and resulted in a stagnant economy. In fact, the economic system was saved from complete collapse only because of the significant leakages that developed in the application of rigorous economic regulations due to the interaction between the robust built-in survival instinct of an economic system and an inefficient and corrupt (or always corruptible for a price) government machinery. The supply of consumer goods, especially of the consumer durables, was restricted and with the stagnant agriculture of those days, the supply of food grains was proving inadequate to feed the growing population. The situation on food front became especially acute in the mid-sixties. At one stage, to meet the crisis of continuing shortage of food grains, the Mrs. Indira Gandhi government even announced a complete nationalisation of trading in food grains but the policy was wisely abandoned overnight even before it got off the ground because, given the corruption and inefficiency of the bureaucracy, this measure would have been disastrous for the internal peace and security of the country. Large amounts of food grains had to be imported under U.S. PL 480 deals against payments in rupees – since we had no foreign exchange reserves to speak of in those days to permit purchases in the open market. Eventually we could not fully pay for the food even in rupee terms and had to seek the “write-off” from the U.S. of the huge PL 480 deposits belonging to it that got built up in the SBI.

 

Soon after the Second World War, the World got divided into two rival camps and the era of Cold War began. After independence, Pakistan chose to align itself with the U.S. and since India desperately needed support in the U.N. on Kashmir issue – it got closer to the Soviet Block. Most of the problems arising from partitions were deftly handled by Sardar Patel except Kashmir where he was overruled by Pundit Nehru who, rather than allowing Indian army to completely throw out the Pakistani aggressors from Kashmir, referred the issue to the United Nations and under assurance from Seikh Abdulla agreed to the holding of a plebiscite in Kashmir by it. We all know how much our country has suffered and agonised over Kashmir and still our leaders – on either side of political spectrum – do not betray any true understanding of the true nature of Islamic intolerance based on Islam and the circumstances under which it was born and the bloody history of its conquests in Arabia, Africa and Asia. If we had understood it, then we would have understood the compulsion of faith under which an ordinary Muslim lives which obliges him to prefer an Islamic Country over a non-Islamic one even if the latter was his motherland.

 

Our blunder about China was just as glaring and painful. Pandit Nehru not only had no true understanding of the nature of Chinese Communism but even refused to understand it in spite of clear and repeated indications to the contrary. Unlike him, Sardar Patel had the rare gift of a tremendous political foresight and sense of the practical which enabled him to save India from further fragments after the partition in 1947.

 

In his letter of Nov. 7, 1950 to Pundit Nehru he wrote,  “My dear Jawaharlal … I have been anxiously thinking over the problem of Tibet and thought I should share with you what is passing through my mind. … The Chinese Government has tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intentions. My own feeling is that at a crucial period they managed to instill into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so-called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means. There can be no doubt that, during the period covered by this correspondence, the Chinese must have been concentrating for an onslaught on Tibet. The final action of the Chinese, in my judgment, is little short of perfidy. The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put faith in us; they chose to be guided by us; and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence. From the latest position, it appears that we shall not be able to rescue the Dalai Lama. Our Ambassador has been at great pains to find an explanation or justification for Chinese policy and actions. …even though we regard ourselves as the friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as their friends …During the last several months, outside the Russian camp, we have practically been alone in championing the cause of Chinese entry into the U.N.O. and in securing from the Americans assurances on the question of Formosa. We have done everything we could to assuage Chinese feelings, to allay its apprehensions and to defend its legitimate claims, in our discussions and correspondence with America and Britain and in the U.N.O. In spite of this, China is not convinced about our disinterestedness; it continues to regard us with suspicion …”  2

 

In spite of the hostile attitude and behavior of China we continued professing Panchasheel and betrayed the Tibetans, a peaceful nation, who trusted us. A quarter million Chinese troops are occupying Tibet where, over last 50 years, they have killed hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, destroyed thousands of their monasteries and their valuable archives and settled 7.5 million Chinese in a country of 6 million. Sensing our cowardly nature and a weak and feeble mental will, the Chinese did not remain content with Tibet and attacked and occupied a large chunk of our territory in Laddakha and NEFA and utterly humiliated us in 1962. Sardar Patel had the foresight, as far back as in 1950, to see this kind of treachery from China and he shared it with Pundit Nehru as will be clear from the following excerpt from his letter to him quoted above. “Chinese irredentism and Communist imperialism are different from the expansionism or imperialism of the Western powers. The former has a cloak of ideology which makes it ten times more dangerous. In the guise of ideological expansion lie concealed racial, national and historical claims. The danger from the north and north-east, therefore, becomes both communist and imperialist. While our western and north-eastern threats to security are still as prominent as before, a new threat has developed from the north and north-east. Thus, for the first time, after centuries, India’s defence has to concentrate itself on two fronts simultaneously.”3 As mentioned above, Sardar Patel’s letter failed to awaken Pundit Nehru to the true intention of the Chinese because he “…had decided that India and China were the natural ‘socialist’ brothers of Asia. Shortly before China’s attack, the Indian Army Chief of Staff had drafted a paper on the threats to India’s security by China, along with recommendations for a clear defence policy. But when Pundit Nehru read the paper, he said: ‘Rubbish. Total rubbish. We don’t need a defence plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats.. Scrap the Army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs.’”4 We all know how dearly we paid for this foolishness. Pundit Nehru never really recovered from the fatal psychological blow he got from Chinese treachery in October 1962 and passed away in May 1964.

 

Sri Lal Bahaddur Shastri became Prime Minister in June 1964 and remained in office till his untimely death in January 1966 in Tashkand (U.S.S.R.) soon after signing the historic Tashkand Peace Treaty with Pakistan’s dictator Sri Ayub Khan after the 1965 Rann of Kuchha War in which the Indian army, having suffered the humiliation of 1962, was much better prepared and easily repulsed the aggressors in Kuchha and reached the outskirts of Lahore in west Punjab. It was in this war that, the slogan of Jai Jawan and Jai Kishan was given by Sri Shastri. Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who became Prime Minister in 1966, defeating Sri Moraraji Dessai in a show of strength with the help of the so called “Syndicate”, proved to be more pragmatic than her father. But she too continued – in fact not only continued but took further – the secular and socialistic policies of her father and adding to them, when political expediency so required, popular slogans like “Garibi Hatawo” “Desh Bachawo”, etc. She nationalized the private scheduled commercial banks and carried the so called “secularism” – which has always been little more than an unabashed appeasement of minorities with a view to their votes – to new heights. There was no improvement on the economic front and the situation on the food front which, as mentioned earlier, was very difficult in the early years of Mrs. Gandhi’s prime-ministership and would have gotten much worse if it was not for a new gift from the West which led to the so called “Green Revolution” and made India self-sufficient in food within a very short time.

 

The Green Revolution

It brought about a significant increase in the production of food grains in the late sixties and early seventies of the last century. The “begging bowl” country soon became self-sufficient in food which freed it from the necessity of seeking degrading foreign hand outs. Improved hybrid seeds, use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides were the main elements of this sudden turnaround in agricultural production. Later on, the introduction of improved breed of cows from West brought about the so called “White Revolution” which quickly led to a breakthrough in the supply of milk and milk-products in the country.

 

The “green revolution” has been far from being – what it initially looked like – an unmixed blessing. It is now increasingly beginning to be realised that the increased volume has come not only at the expense of the quality which has been declining all along but also has a hidden and ever growing price tag attached to it which is fast reaching levels which will be too high for us to pay. The underground water table is running dangerously low, the surface water sources are drying out and the land – which has been ruthlessly raped using chemicals – is so fast losing its fertility that even our increasing doses of fertilizers and pesticides will not be able to keep the production from going down and that too even if and only if we can continue to pour sufficient water out of the fast depleting stock that was accumulated over thousands of years. Not only this, but in addition to all the above the chemical food is playing havoc with the health of our people because now, not only the taste and nutritive value of our food grains, fruits and vegetables and milk is nothing compared to what it was even two-three decades ago, but the level of harmful chemical substances present in these food items is, at times, dozens of times more than what is considered safe for human consumption. In short, the indiscriminate use of chemicals in various products which is playing havoc with the health of humans and cattle in particular and flora and fauna in general, is leading us towards an ecological disaster.

 

The Economic Liberalisation

By the late seventies our big neighbour Communist China started moving towards a gradual privatisation and liberalization of its economy. Still, we continued with our restrictive economic policies and kept talking about socialism and removal of poverty through its agency. It was only the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 that fully brought home – at least to a leading section of the policy makers – the foolishness of the restrictive economic policies which we had stubbornly continued to follow even though the country had been reeling under the suffocating and utterly corrupt bureaucratic machine that had been growing in size and crookedness as a result of our elected government’s efforts directed at a more and more detailed regulation of the economy. It was plain that the Asian countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore who had subscribed to open market model had grown very fast and the other Asian and East European countries who followed the socialistic model simply stagnated and some even collapsed under the weight of a corrupt government machinery. To hold back was impossible in the face of these facts. Sri Narshimha Rao’s government took first step towards economic liberalization by initiating a cautious and gradual but progressive deregulation of the economy. The non-congress governments that followed continued this policy and our economy was increasingly opened to foreign goods and capital. Our domestic industries which were known for their poor quality products were now getting increasingly exposed to competition from abroad. This has led to a lot of changes in the structure of private sector industries which are now getting increasingly better equipped to meet the challenges of globalization under which an increasing number of MNC’s are entering the Indian markets on their own or in collaboration with Indian companies.

 

During the last five years a reverse movement has also started – an increasing penetration of world markets by the Indian entrepreneurs and a partial inflow of the Indian talent back to India, especially due to the recent novel phenomenon of outsourcing. Although India still continues to supply an increasing number of technically trained young talent to Europe and North America, there are signs that, as the salaries here are getting better and even competitive (in real terms) to those in the West – specially due to Outsourcing by the MNC’s – more and more Indians are staying home. Our cities, especially those housing the newly built huge Western style Shopping Malls and the offices of the MNC’s are increasingly beginning to look like their counterparts in the West. The upshot of all this and the increasing penetration of Western science & technology in the lives of Indian people due to the IT revolution is that we are getting increasingly exposed to Western modes of thinking, living and acting. As the annual growth rates of the Indian economy are approaching the double digit figures, its political, business and industry leaders are confidently expressing the hope that India will grow very fast and will be akin to the advanced countries of the West within a few decades.

 

Where all this is leading us to?  We are clearly moving towards becoming a modern socio-economic machine which will be geared towards meeting, primarily, only the vital and physical needs of man, for the material perfection and well-being seems to be fast becoming the sole recognised Dharma of Indian society , all else being considered either a pretentious falsity or a thing of minor and dependent consequence. The overriding concern that the modern societies show for the fulfilment of physical desires of man, and the prominent part that money plays in the fulfilment of such desires has brought in such a short-sighted spirit of utilitarianism that every thing is judged from the monetary angle and success has became synonymous with greater command over resources. In other words, money has become the supreme lord in fact, if not in name.

 

The gospel of utilitarianism which seems to permeate modern societies has debased by its touch all that has opened to it. Virtually nothing seems to have escaped completely its distorting influence. Politics, education, medicine, art, music, religion, friendships, relations, love, etc., all seem to have come under its sway. The spirit of duty, commitment, service seems to be fast loosing ground to it even in areas such as education, medicine, social service, etc., which have traditionally been its strongholds. In short, the spirit of what Sri Aurobindo termed “economic barbarism” still seems to seriously afflict modern society. “This economic barbarism is essentially that of the vital man who mistakes the vital being for the self and accepts its satisfaction as the first aim of life.  The characteristic of Life is desire and the instinct of possession. Just as the physical barbarian makes the excellence of the body and the development of physical force, health and prowess his standard and aim, so the vitalistic or economic barbarian makes the satisfaction of wants and desires and the accumulation of possessions his standard and aim. His ideal man is not the cultured or noble or thoughtful or moral or religious, but the successful man. To arrive, to succeed, to produce, to accumulate, to possess is his existence. The accumulation of wealth and more wealth, the adding of possessions to possessions, opulence, show, pleasure, a cumbrous inartistic luxury, a plethora of conveniences, life devoid of beauty and nobility, religion vulgarised or coldly formalised, politics and government turned into a trade and profession, enjoyment itself made a business, this is commercialism. To the natural unredeemed economic man beauty is a thing otiose or a nuisance, art and poetry a frivolity or an ostentation and a means of advertisement. His idea of civilisation is comfort, his idea of morals social respectability, his idea of politics the encouragement of industry, the opening of markets, exploitation and trade following the flag, his idea of religion at best a pietistic formalism or the satisfaction of certain vitalistic emotions. He values education for its utility in fitting a man for success in a competitive or, it may be, a socialised industrial existence, science for the useful inventions and knowledge, the comforts, conveniences, machinery of production with which it arms him, its power for organisation, regulation, stimulus to production. The opulent plutocrat and the successful mammoth capitalist and organiser of industry are the supermen of the commercial age and the true, if often occult rulers of its society.

 

The essential barbarism of all this is its pursuit of vital success, satisfaction, productiveness, accumulation, possession, enjoyment, comfort, convenience for their own sake. The vital part of the being is an element in the integral human existence as much as the physical part; it has its place but must not exceed its place. A full and well-appointed life is desirable for man living in society, but on condition that it is also a true and beautiful life. Neither the life nor the body exist for their own sake, but as vehicle and instrument of a good higher than their own. They must be subordinated to the superior needs of the mental being, chastened and purified by a greater law of truth, good and beauty before they can take their proper place in the integrality of human perfection. Therefore in a commercial age with its ideal, vulgar and barbarous, of success, vitalistic satisfaction, productiveness and possession the soul of man may linger a while for certain gains and experiences, but cannot permanently rest. If it persisted too long, Life would become clogged and perish of its own plethora or burst in its straining to a gross expansion. Like the too massive Titan it will collapse by its own mass, mole ruet sua.”5

 

The Present Situation in India

In India, in the absence of a developed judicial, legal and administrative infrastructure, the condition on this front is much worse than in most developed societies in the West. As we have seen above, the story of our over five decades of independence has been that of an exclusive preoccupation of public policy with “bread and butter” issues coupled with the repeated doses of ill-conceived governmental interventions and adventures in the economic system. The present situation is much worse than what we started out with because, during the intervening years, a spirit of a very very short-sighted “utilitarianism” and an acute selfishness has gotten inculcated in the functioning of individuals and groups. Wherever one looks one finds individuals and groups infested with the “utilitarian” spirit and busy exploring and innovating new ways and means of somehow, anyhow, making some extra money. Men everywhere seem to be aiming for quick, cheap and easy ways and means for material success and solution to their problems, forsaking all higher values and nobler aspirations of their being. Education, medicine, business, administration, law and justice, everywhere it is the same story. The result is that our educational institutions continue to supply degrees and diplomas but no longer provide any education worth the name; our doctors and hospitals are more likely to deprive a person of his money and body’s natural health than his disease; one must be a real genius in the art of shopping if one is to avoid paying too much and buying an adulterated, fake or a poor quality product in our markets. In our courts, justice may not be denied, but it can almost always be delayed indefinitely, for a fee. Our politics, government and the administrative machinery are increasingly taking on the appearance of a real nemesis for the country.

 

We have forgotten that when everyone is trying to get somewhere by stepping on everyone else, no one really gets anywhere. The narrow and short-sighted utilitarian spirit not only results into spiritual deprivation but must also prove in the end catastrophic for the material well being of the society. The country seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of mental, moral and physical deprivation with its nominal leaders (on every side of the political spectrum) – themselves inflicted with the disease of acute selfishness – watching helplessly.

 

The Way Out

We must realise in our mind, heart and soul that the modern ideal of progress and material prosperity, even when pursued efficiently cannot lead us to a state basically different from the state of the modern developed societies which has nothing to recommend for itself. Look at the loneliness and psychological and emotional deprivation of individuals resulting from an extreme concentration on one’s physical being – even to the extent of the exclusion of one’s nucleus family – and imagine the relentless suffering that comes one’s way from the feeling of not being loved or wanted by anyone and from the psychological disorders resulting from this – so common in “developed” societies – and it would be obvious that India is still much better than the advanced societies it is foolishly aspiring to imitate. This will be a state, lower – in terms of individual happiness and fulfilment – than where we are even at present, because we have not yet gone whole hog in the material pit and the power of the eternal Indian spirit is there to prevent it from ever happening in the future. Therefore we will not sink to the bottom but as long as we are shut up in our present narrow surface consciousness with its enormous concentration on material pleasures and comforts, the effective pursuit and attainment of an ideal state (worthy of its name) is not really possible for us. The key to the whole problem lies, as India has always known, in a transition to a higher level of consciousness. For, at present level of consciousness, no matter how ingeniously and efficiently we organise our society, we cannot basically do too much better than the other materially advanced societies. In fact,  this evolutionary world has been so planned as to have a built-in incentive for rising into ever higher and higher planes of consciousness, since, the problem and difficulties at any level of consciousness – and they are different at different levels – are really solvable only at a higher level of consciousness.

 

Given the triumphant march of Western Science and its dazzling success in almost every field during the last two centuries, the whole of the human race has become so enamoured by the power of Science and its machinery to solve all its pressing problems – even those pertaining to the perfection of man and his society – that not only is it lax in addressing serious outer ecological and environmental problems looming large on the horizon, but is even neglecting the serious inner psychological and moral problems which are assuming such alarming proportions – global terrorism is only an outer symptom of these – as to pose a serious threat to its very existence. Our eyes are turned outside while the root of all the problems lies in our own inner constitution. Ervin Laszlo writes in his book, The Inner Limits of Mankind: “There are hardly any world problems that cannot be traced to human agency and which could not be overcome by appropriate changes in human behaviour. The root cause even of physical and ecological problems are the inner constraints on our vision and values… We contemplate changing almost anything on this earth but ourselves.”6

 

Humanity at large has to understand and realize in the heart of its heart that what Science can do for it is very limited and even that does not come without a very heavy price to be paid in terms of the dimunition of our inner peace and happiness. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, “The utmost widening of a physical objective knowledge, even if it embrace the most distant solar systems and the deepest layers of the earth and sea and the most subtle powers of material substance and energy, is not the essential gain for us, not the one thing which it is most needful for us to acquire. That is why the gospel of materialism, in spite of the dazzling triumphs of physical Science, proves itself always in the end a vain and helpless creed, and that too is why physical Science itself with all its achievements, though it may accomplish comfort, can never achieve happiness and fullness of being for the human race. Our true happiness lies in the true growth of our whole being, in a victory throughout the total range of our existence, in mastery of the inner as well as and more than the outer, the hidden as well as the overt nature; our true completeness comes not by describing wider circles on the plane where we began, but by transcendence.”7

 

The Divine Magician

“There is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilisable appearance. It is the magic of the Magician you are trying to analyse, but only when you enter into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you begin to experience the true origination, significance and circles of the Lila. I say “begin” because the Divine Reality is not so simple that at the first touch you can know all of it or put it into a single formula; it is the Infinite and opens before you an infinite knowledge to which all Science put together is a bagatelle.”8

 

It is to the Divine Magician that India must turn to for a true resolution of all her problems. And, as Vedanta tells us, He is not far, He is our very own self – the highest truth of our being and nature in which we are inseparably one with all existence. To aspire for the Divine is to aspire for the greatest possible perfection and fulfilment. “Whatever is man’s faith or sure Idea in him, that he becomes,” says Lord Krishna in the Gita. Now, this is the sheer truth of the workings of this universe which is at the very foundation of all Yoga systems. Thus, if a person whole-heartedly aspires for the Divine with an unshakable faith, he is sure to realise his essential identity with Him and eventually have his whole nature transformed into the Divine Nature.

 

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have repeatedly told us that in our surface human nature we are usually the unconscious slaves of many undivine and antidivine powers of the vital and mental worlds whose very purpose is to block the descent of Divine Love, Light and Force so that they can continue to keep this evolving earth-nature subject to their yoke of falsehood, suffering and death. A person or a society which blindly pursues – as we have been doing ever since we got in a position of doing so – a surface vital-mental objective comes increasingly under the influence of these powers with predictable consequences. This has always been well understood and recognised in India. It is only under the intoxication of the utilitarian materialistic gospel that we have nationally forgotten it and as a result have gotten ourselves into deep waters of desire, ignorance and inertia.

 

The Indian society can, therefore do nothing better than to make the seeking, finding, and manifestation of the Divine on the part of its members as the first and the only aim of all its activities and endeavours. In the process it will tend to grow in knowledge, power and beauty and there will be an automatic dissolution of the problems that normally beset a society, including material deprivation and poverty. To make an effective start in this direction, “There must be a group forming a strong body of cohesive will with the spiritual knowledge to save India and the world. It is India that can bring Truth in the world. By manifestation of the Divine Will and Power alone, India can preach her message to the world and not by imitating the materialism of the West. By following the Divine Will India shall shine at the top of the spiritual mountain and show the way of Truth and organise world unity.”9

 

All this is not to suggest that we should – even if we could, which is impossible – go back to the past forms of ancient Indian culture. That will be an unnatural imposition on the present time spirit. Rather, we should do as Sri Aurobindo suggested, “You need not come back to the old forms, but you can retain the spirit which might create its own new forms,…”10

 

We call upon all our brothers and sisters, the world over, to make a start in this direction in their own way.

 

References:

1. Francois Gautier, India’s Self-Denial, page 43

2. Sri Aurobindo’s Action, July 1997, page 14

3. Sri Aurobindo’s Action, July 1997, page 14

4. India’s Self-Denial, page 55

5. SABCL15, pages 72-73

6. Nadkarni, M.V., The Problems of Humanity in

Sri Aurobindo’s light, p.10

7. SABCL19, page 729

8. SABCL22, page 97

9. CWM7, pages 286-87

10. India’s Rebirth, page 176

 

A Declaration

We do not fight against any creed, any religion.

We do not fight against any form of government.

We do not fight against any social class.

We do not fight against any nation or civilisation.

We are fighting division, unconsciousness, ignorance, inertia and falsehood.

We are endeavouring to establish upon earth union, knowledge, consciousness, Truth, and we fight whatever opposes the advent of this new creation of Light, Peace, Truth and Love.

- The Mother

source: http://resurgentindia.org