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While
we are rejoicing in celebrating the golden jubilee of our
political independence, I pen these lines with a heavy
heart. It is not to hurt any body’s feelings, nor is
it meant to create any controversy. I have been pained to
see how this beautiful land of ours, with lovely people,
is being misused and abused by a small minority of clever
people, calling themselves the custodians of the common
man’s interests, and ‘poly-tricking’ to
delude us into believing that they have been responsible
for the ‘progress’, if such a thing has
happened to us, in the last half a century.
Whereas it is true that fifty years, is not a
significantly large chunk of time in the history of a
nation, the gradual downward trend in all spheres of
human activity, makes very sad commentary on the life of
our mother land. It is also true that during the first
fifty years of the history of another great democracy in
America there was greater chaos than what we have seen in
India. Times have changed. While American constitution
was written in 1772 AD, we had ours in the present
century. That should have made a vast difference.
The logo that we have chosen for our independence
"Satyam eva Jayathe" deliberately excluded the
latter part of the saying in the Mundaka Upanishad (III
1.6) which goes thus in toto."Satyam eva Jayathe
Nanritham"
(Truth only triumphs - not
untruth)
In retrospect we have
practised exactly the opposite. "Anritham eva
Jayathe Na. Satyam" Untruth only triumphs and not
the truth, applies to every aspect of our living. Take
any field and see how this dictum is followed without any
deviation. In the political field we only have people who
tell lies day in and day out, holding on to their
positions of power based primarily on untruth. The
Gandhian School of thought is given a go by including the
Gandhi cap. Our present nethas put the cap on
other’s heads - the gullible public and the poor
people of this country.
While there are a lot of good people around, some of them
in politics as well, they have become ineffective, mainly
because of their inability to counter the bad influence
of those minority of bad elements. We, the majority of
people who criticise the politicians for their failures,
are equally responsible for the country’s downhill
course, because of our apathy. No amount of drawing room
gossip is going to help improve matters unless all of us
take an active part in building this great country of
ours. Bob Hope, the American comedian, once said "
All those who know how to run the government are only
driving taxis or cutting hair." Very true, indeed!
They cry hoarse about eradicating poverty from every
platform, but poverty has only increased in the last 50
years. The rich - poor gap was around 30 : 1 in 1947 and
today it is around 61.1:1. The poor have become poorer,
and they pay for their poverty with their lives. Every
conceivable disease from common cold to cancer is much
higher in the poor compared to the rich. The greatest
‘risk factor’ of all diseases is the anxiety of
not knowing where your next meal comes from. The rich are
afraid of the poor now. It is poverty and unemployment
that begets criminals, drug addicts, and murders in
society.
While the poor in the villages have all the ailments, the
medical facilities are concentrated in larger cities
where they are least needed. This inverse - care law is
greatly exaggerated in the case of our netas who take
their illnesses, minor or major, to foreign specialists
at the poor tax payer’s cost.
Some of these netas get diseases at their convenience to
avoid going to jail. I have named this new disease as
"cell mediated angina"; where the cell is in
the Thihar jail and angina is the chest pain. Ofcourse,
they get obliging super specialists who vouch for the
genuineness of their diseases. (Anritam eva Jayathe at
work here also). The nobility of the medical profession
reaches its nadir here !
Our netas vie with each other in competing for scams
involving thousands of crores of money. Corruption is at
its best. While a peon gets caught for accepting a few
rupees, the net as go scot free even with crores kept in
gunny bags.
WHAT IS THE REMEDY:
Having defined the disease, we should think of the
management. I have some thoughts in this direction.
The time honoured British game of divide and rule is
being practised in the more refined way by our present
day rulers. They divide people in the name of religion,
caste, region, social status, language and what have you.
If we could make our innocent brethren to realize the
truth (satyam) behind these moves, we may be able to
defeat their game plan.
LANGUAGE:
Language is only a mode of communication. The first
blow on the unity of the country was the plan to divide
the country based on language. Ever since then thousands
of innocent people must have died in riots in the name of
language. Nothing could be more foolish. We should make
our people realize that one could carve out a new
language for India from our different languages and
dialects. We have intelligent people who could put
together a simple unifying language for all of us. If we
study the history of the English language, we would
realize that it is very easy to create a new language.
English was born out of a wedlock between the invading
Norman’s French and the local Anglo-Saxon dialects
originally from Hungary and other parts of Europe. It
grew and absorbed words from every language and has
succeeded in being the language of international
communication. All languages have the same root. The
Indo-European languages are close to Sanskrit. We could
get a few wordsmiths to create a simple unifying language
for the country.
RELIGION:
God and religion seem to be our next divider. In the
matter of religion fanaticism is the curse. Ritualistic
religion is a personal choice and a personal matter. No
one should have a right to meddle with it. But the
theology of religion again could be identical for the
nation. I think all will agree that we in India have had
a special kind of ethics, called by Max Mueller, as
Haenotheism; the ideal form of conduct that was accepted
as the foundation of the right living by all religions
orders, whether theistic, atheistic, or agnostic. I feel
that the Indian Haenotheism is not a simple deviation of
the monotheism or the polytheism, as was conceived by Max
Mueller, but a new concept of respect for other
man’s God or belief. It is the unity in diversity
and the diversity in unity. What a beautiful concept. The
original idea runs thus:
"Satyam
Brihad Ritam Ugram,
........... Prithvim Dharayanthi."
(Truth, Eternal Order that
is great and stern,these uphold the earth)
What could be better than
this idea. All would agree that God is Satya (Truth) or
at least that God expects us to follow the truth. Again
"Ritam" is order or dharma. It includes justice
and goodness. Rita is, therefore, opposed to evil; the
opposition to evil must be severe and so it is spoken as
"Ritam Ugram" (order that is stern and fierce).
Rita, and Satya, (order and truth) are the two essential
parts of the concept of divinity. I do not think anyone
will object to this concept.
The natural law when combined with moral law becomes Rita
in the true sense; which is cognate with the cosmic law.
This idea is even older than the Karma theory. According
to the former the inflexible cosmic laws rule the fate of
man on earth. The original Greek idea of "fate"
postdates the concept of ‘Rita’ in Indian
thought.
Rita reduces chaos to cosmos, and gives order and
integration, that result in beauty and order in society.
This concept of the theology of the religion of every
Indian belonging to all conventional religions could be a
great concept, the gluon, to bind us all, brothers and
sisters, in this great land of ours.
CASTE & SOCIAL
STATUS:
Caste system is another of our enemies. When looked
at dispassionately, caste system is there all over the
world. Mr. Smith is the son of either a goldsmith or a
blacksmith. Mr. Baker must have come from the baking
trade. But in India this system was used to abuse the
less fortunate people in society by the rich and the
powerful. It reached its lowest level in the practice of
untouchability. The latter is not only barbaric, but it
is an animal instinct in man. This has to be condemned in
no uncertain terms. Equal opportunities to all must be
the fundamental right. Our netas game of using these
means to pay lip service to the minorities and the poor
should all be exposed. Their very existence and their
position, acquired using this kind of anritham (untruth)
should not be allowed to succeed. (Eva jayathe)
Education and economic upliftment should be our
aim to bring these people to the level of others in
society. This could be done by the proper education and
not the one that we are pursuing now. Today’s
education in our set up is "filling the pail",
of replicative knowledge. Our ancient system was that of
meta-cognitive knowledge where the child learns with the
help of nature the true wisdom, and not just replicative
knowledge from the books and notes, to be repeated in the
examination answer books. The latter lacks any assistance
in the filed of human ethics. Value based education is
the need of the hour, where the memorising examination
takes a back seat in evaluation. Continuous teacher and
peer evaluation, with only two grades- satisfactory and
unsatisfactory-should transform the present set up to
that of useful value based education.
Economy should be helped to look up using the
Gandhian cottage industry norms. Even the great economist
Schaumaker thinks that the mega indusrtrialisation does
not result in real progress. In his recent book The
Guide to the Perplexed he stresses the fact that the
real progress could come only by improving man and not by
producing more.!
Ours is a great country and it has a bright future. I
have lot of faith in our youth, who should see through
the game plan of our politicians. They should defeat
their nefarious designs and put the country back on the
path of righteousness proclaiming loudly and practising
"Sathyam eva Jayathe".
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