A Vision for the Future Of Bharat

“I think the period from 1750-1947 is largely a dead period in Indian history. This may be an extreme statement. But I think it is true. Ultimately this period should be written off. Nothing was achieved in this period in terms of creativity or originality. On the contrary people have suffered in every respect and become lesser human beings.”
From Dharampal’s ‘Rediscovering India’

As a nation we appear to be deeply lost. The Western philosophies and way of life that were thrust upon us by the British don’t seem to have taken root in our soil. However, all our efforts seem to be focussed on making this wilted foreign seedling grow into a mighty tree. We want world-class ‘development’, ‘hospital-based-health’, ‘school-based-education’—we want to compete with the West, play their game, and win at it. This is probably not possible and playing someone else’s game, the rules of which are incomprehensibly alien to us, is not a very useful way forward for a nation.

Yet, the sparks of our civilization burn bright in the middle of the spiritual and material darkness we find ourselves in. We continue to speak our numerous languages, we still celebrate our beautiful festivals, we continue to cook our elaborate ancient cuisines, our women continue to wear their traditional dresses and a large percentage of our population—of all denominations—continues to be very religious.

The wise, confident, infinitely creative civilization that was birthed in this soil, which gave us the Vedas, our self-sufficient villages and our magnificent art and architecture, must have grown from native seeds. It is only from such seeds that vibrant civilizations arise, civilizations that sing the song of the soil and have the potential to touch the hearts of sensitive, considerate and courageous people from every part of the world.

There is no going back! And going forward in the direction we have been currently herded into is suicide! So, what do we do? Maybe we need to do nothing because the game of Kaala is on, wholly inscrutable to us, and things will go where they will, perfect as ever.

Meanwhile, here is a proposal…

With all of the above as background, it would be good if we vision a future for Bharat, vision it with the blessings of our sacred soil, vision it in silent communion with our ancestors and our Gods, vision it with the collective wisdom of our purvajanmas accessed in silent meditative contemplation. Because a vision has great power and it is time that we sit down, look past the toxic fog that surrounds us and think about the future that can be ours.

Another elephant

Middle-class people of my generation (I was born in 1966) have seen constant improvement in our material wealth over our lifetime. We have gone from lower middle-class to upper middle-class and in some cases to the rich. Our children, who are now in their twenties, have grown up pampered. If people of my generation think about it at all, they think the lives of their children will follow the same trajectory of increasing material wealth. All the advice we give our children about the future has this assumption built into it.

Let us examine this assumption with some anecdotes:
– My friend who grew up in a barsati in Delhi today owns a posh 3-bedroom apartment and drives a Jaguar.
– When another friend joined his company in 1994, it had 4 thousand employees. Today I think it is more like 4 lakh, a 100 fold increase. My friend rose to the top of this company and created a lot of wealth for himself.
– When my uncle bought a plot of land around 1970, he paid Rs 4 thousand. Six years ago, a builder bought it and gave my uncle 4 flats out of the 10 he built on the plot. The flats are notionally worth Rs 4 Crores, a 10,000 fold increase.

etc.

You will also have stories like this to tell. Is it reasonable to assume that this kind of growth will also happen in the lives of our children? It seems very unlikely.

Here are some events that can make the upward graph change for our children:
– America having a large economic downturn or a stock market crash and the dollar losing its position as the reserve currency of the world.
– Fossil fuels becoming more difficult to extract and hence costing substantially more. (In other words, the end of the cheap, subsidised energy era)
– Environmental and personal health issues that make us fall out of the mainstream.
– A rearrangement in geo-politics, for example, a multi-polar world with many civilizational centres as opposed to the uni-polar world we live in today.

etc.

You can add to this list or create your own. Some honest contemplation on our experience will tell us that our children will live a different kind of life from ours.

If this is so, should we not be thinking about this now? If education is preparing children for the future, an uncertain future, should we not have a different conception of what we have to do in school? Is the frantic activity that goes on in schools, both mainstream and alternative, perhaps a way to postpone thinking about all this?

Seeing through the brain fog

Pawanji says that he sometimes wonders how the illiterate see the world, because he finds himself forced to read everything he comes across – Billboards, road signs, shop names, books etc. We appear to largely live in a mental world created by words and images that we confuse with reality.

To see things as they are, we need to come out of the brain fog of manufactured narratives. When our observation or lived experience contradicts a narrative we believe, the result is a cognitive dissonance that can, if we pay attention, lead us towards the truth. Here are some examples to show you what I mean. The first one follows from the previous week’s post.

The narrative: India was a very poor country.
Crack in the narrative: Where did our uneducated, ‘uncivilized’, tribal women get so much silver from? Especially since there are no silver mines here. (Also, what did the colonizers come here for? To improve our lives?)


The above graph is from: Maddison A (2007), Contours of the World Economy 1-2003 AD. Note that from 1 AD to 1700 AD India and China together accounted for over 40% of the world’s GDP. (More information here)

The narrative: India has a largely oral and not a written tradition.
Crack in the narrative: India possesses an estimate of ten million manuscripts, probably the largest collection in the world. (Ref: National mission for manuscripts)

The narrative: For centuries, the Indian social system is primarily defined by an evil caste system.
Crack in the narrative: Would not such an autonomous, decentralized, stable, adaptive, dynamic, self-reproducing social organization, also neutral to all political, economic, and religious doctrines and environments be the most ideal system if one really existed as such? (This is a direct quote from here)

One can go on and on. Science and math and social science will all have many areas that will lend itself to this type of analysis. If our children spent time looking at all their school textbooks with a critical eye, would they have a better education? What do you think?