. THE MINDLESS INDIAN

A WIDE CANVAS

 THE MINDLESS INDIAN

In 1958, William Lederer and Eugene Burdick wrote a book titled 'The Ugly American' which became a best seller and was made into a film in 1963 with Marlon Brando. It was a sort of political novel, showing the loud, arrogant, ethnocentric behaviour of Americans abroad, while being basically ignorant. It was said to be based on real characters, though given fictional names. Earlier, American tourists were actually photographed in Cuba behaving in such manner. See a 1948 photo:

Later, this term was applied even at home. It has stuck, and the book is still read.

I do not know how the learned people  look at Indians. But I tend to think of us as 'mindless'.

If we take the history of India since Independence, we can easily see that we , as  a nation, have not tackled even a single issue promptly, fully or even satisfactorily. Every attempted solution was partial, and led to more problems. Kashmir, border dispute with China, the way Indians and Hindus are treated abroad- our govt does not seem to think or move at all- unless forced by others; but the initiative is always with the others, and we seem to be reacting, late and usually ineffectively.

This is so even in domestic matters. A commission was set up in 56 to reorganise states on linguistic basis; but there are still disputes, after 60 years. In the meantime, states having the same language have been divided, making the whole exercise ridiculous. Sharing river waters is disputed by states and for over 40 years no solution has been found. So many plans and so many lakhs of crores spent- but poverty is still with us. Simple things like what should be the medium of instruction in schools- a matter that should be left to the people in a democracy- become the subject of hot  political debate and local chauvinism, in spite of clear Supreme Court directions. It seems Indian politics can move only on small issues. Where then is the time to focus on bigger issues?

There is another , broader and deeper, reason why we Indians, especially Hindus, can be called 'mindless'. All our ideas and ideals are borrowed. We do not seem to be having a mind of our own on any issue. Even regarding our religion, we defer to what others say or expect.We can never say: we are Indians.

India- a Nation and a Civilisation

Academic historians, politicians and the press and the media treat  India as a mere geographical and political entity- as a nation state. In fact this is how things are looked at by most people- so called learned and laymen alike everywhere.

But true, great historians never look at nations like that- as mere political entities. Arnold Toynbee states:

 "the intelligible unit of historical study is neither a nation state nor mankind as a whole but a certain grouping of humanity which we have called a society"

and he regards history as the study of

"why and how societies have come into existence in the process of civilisation."

He identifies 5 such societies or civilisations:

• Western Christendom
• Orthodox Christian Society in Eastern Europe and Russia
• Islamic Society
• HINDU Society in the tropical subcontinent of India
• A Far-Eastern society in the subtropical  and temperate regions between the arid zone and the pacific.

He makes a profound observation: if we look at the scene at 775 AD and now

we find that the number and identity of the societies on the world map are nearly the same at the present time.

( Toynbee studies a total of 19 major civilisations, 4  abortive civilisations and 5 arrested civilisations) He says civilisations are born out of more primitive conditions, not due to race or environment, but due to response to challenges, and they decay due to the decline of the 'creative minority'.)

Writing in the 1930s, Toynbee said :

In the struggle for existence, the West has driven its contemporaries to the wall and entangled them in the meshes of its economic and political ascendancy, but it has not yet disarmed them of their distinctive cultures. Hard pressed though they are, they can still call their souls their own.

In modern times our own Western Civilization has cast the net of its economic system all round the World, and this economic unification on a Western basis has been followed by a political unification on the same basis.

 While the economic and political maps have now been Westernized, the cultural map remains substantially what it was before..

Based on its success in the material sphere , the West in its hubris assumed that its history was THE history and imposed a uniform view on the whole world,  " the   unity of history", 

involving the assumption that there is only one river of civilization, our own, and that all others are either tributary to it or else lost in the desert sands.

Toynbee traces it to three roots:

• the egocentric illusion
• the illusion of the 'unchanging East'
• the illusion of progress as a movement that proceeds in a straight line.
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Arnold Toynbee

National Portraits Gallery, London.

These were written 80 years ago! Toynbee believed that the main bases of civilisations were culture and religion, unlike others who stressed political factors. 

Western political dominance has since formally ended, in the sense that many colonies have become independent, but the ideological dominance- the Euro centric view- has not ended. The economic dominance of the West has deepened and intensified, not only due to the international agencies like World Bank, IMF and WTO under the hegemony of the US, but due to the fact that all economies are now modelled on the Western pattern, killing all indigenous and heterogeneous technologies. Westernisation on material lines is taken as modernisation.

But in the cultural sphere, the struggle has intensified. Toynbee wrote:

It is the easiest thing in the world for commerce to export a new Western technique. It is infinitely harder for a Western poet or saint to kindle in a non-Western soul the spiritual flame that is alight in his own. While giving diffusion its due, it is necessary to emphasize the part that has been played in human history by original creation.

All these extracts from Toynbee are taken from vol.1 of the two volume abridgement by D.C.Somervell, OUP, 1987.These do not appear in this order in the book.

 80 years ago, Toynbee could write that the West could not touch our souls. But it is our souls which are now targeted by both Islam and Christianity! Pope John Paul II said in 1999 in Delhi that in the new millennium, they had to harvest Asian souls- and specifically mentioned Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs!

CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS!

Soon after Toynbee expressed his thesis, the West was plunged into the Second World War and thereafter into the cold war. Public attention was riveted on ideological clashes, military hegemony, debates about capitalism, cold war, etc. But this era ended with the collapse of the USSR. What would happen in the post-cold war era?

In the 90s, Samuel Huntington, a political theorist, came with the idea that the world would thereafter undergo  clashes among the nations mainly on cultural-religious basis. For this, he divided the world into 10  major civilizational  groups:

• The Western civilization ( including  US, Western Europe,Canada, Austalia, New Zealand)
• Latin America
• The Orthodox countries of the former USSR
• Eastern Buddhist World
• Sinic ( China dominating Singapore, Koreas, Vietnam, Taiwan)
• Hindu Civilization (India, Nepal, Bhutan)
• Japan
• The Muslim World
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Israel

The following map will make it clear:

Kyle Cronan at the English language Wikepedia

[GFDL(http:://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

It can be noticed that India, like Japan, stands all ALONE in the world.

Huntington pointed out that both Christianity and Islam believed in the same basic things, which were bound to clash:

• Both are missionary in nature and spirit, seeking conversion of the others
• Both are Universal- that they alone are True, others are nothing
• Their religious values alone represent the final goal human existence
• Those who do not subscribe to this view are infidels or leading purposeless lives, resulting in violent clashes.

Huntington also noted:

• Resurgence in Islam
• Explosion in Muslim population all over the world.
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Samuel P.Huntington, By Copyright World Economic Forum

(www.weforum.org)swiss-image.ch/Photo by Peter Lauth

[CC-BY-SA 2.0 Creative Commons.

Points here are extracted from the book: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Penguin India, 2000. This is a fascinating book, and no extract can do justice to its details and arguments.

Ever since the book was published, armchair experts and vain academics have been debating; what has happened may not be exactly as Huntington wrote but broadly, the end of the cold war has  not brought an end of clashes, and  we on the ground notice that there is no area of the world which is free from clashes on religious and cultural grounds.  

The irony is that both Christians and Muslims, and also all scholars and thinkers look at us Hindus as a distinct civilization. Both Islam and Christianity are trying to browbeat and overwhelm us. They are openly aiming to convert and destroy our civilisation and culture. But many Hindus themselves, and our leftists, so called intellectuals, self-styled secularists, the English Press and Media and  politicians are telling us that all are  true and  alike and equal! Hindus not only do not have a deep understanding of either their country and its history and culture or that of Islam  and Christianity, they do not have any awareness of themselves as bearers of a distinct civilisation!

This is the greatest sign of their utter mindlessness!

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY ARE UNINDIAN- Involves De-Indianisation.

 Indians generally feel that people are free to follow any faith -religion- of their choice. This is actually followed in their own lives and land: just the number of sects and divisions among Hindus is mindboggling. Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh- there is a certain basic unity among them- we call them Dharma based Indic religions. All of them regard India as their Motherland. All of them are attached to this soil, as the child is attached to the mother. All their holy places are here. All their saints and sages have been here. It is their home- only home. 

But what about the Muslim? While politicians argue endlessly, while academics twist and turn, here is Sir V.S.Naipaul stating the matter straight:

Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert's world view alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance  for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily  set on the boil.

Taken from:  Prologue to 'Beyond Belief'; Picador, 2010.
This book is based on his travels in four Islamic countries- Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia, all with converted Muslim populations, following up on his visit 17 years earlier!

Well, these views are not from the pen of any Hindutva agent but from a Nobel Laureate, who, the Nobel foundation , in awarding him the prize in 2001 said, "combined perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny ....that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".

Sir V.S.Naipaul

"The Nobel prize in Literature, 2001."

Nobel Prize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014 Web. 25 Feb 2015.

If islam appears to be an open enemy of all non-Islamic civilisations, Christianity's approach is more subtle, though it too is a self-professed enemy of other faiths. After 1965, it has incorporated many local practices in its liturgy and translated the Bible in many local languages,but the spirit still remains alien: the converted Christian sits in India or Sri Lanka and thinks of or imagines Palestine, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Sea of Galilee, Mount Sinai etc. ie all his holy lands are un-Indian. He becomes imbued with the Western notion of history and culture. 

But the real problem with Islam and Christianity has deeper sources. For a Hindu, religious merit lies in leading a pious and holy life- personal austerity and enquiry and reflection.. Islam and Christianity also accept this- outwardly. But what is a pious or holy or Christian life? It is not only about fasting or prayer or charity. For a Muslim, conversion of or killing the infidel is a religious duty! For a Christian, bringing the word of God ie the Bible , and making others see the light of Christ- ie conversion is a religious duty! So, when they say they are only practising their religion, it means they are converting! For them, freedom of religion means freedom to convert. This is the history of Christianity for the last 2000 years; this is the history of Islam for the last 1300 years. And the whole world bears witness to their conversion! India is the only civilisation still left unconquered. That is why there is so much hue and cry now. But the Hindus do not seem to mind!

But if Hindus leave their timidity, think and look around, we can easily tackle these conversion zealots. Surveys show that less than 1% of young adults in the US have what is called a "biblical" world view; less than one half of one percent of people between the ages of 18 and 23 have such biblical world view. Nearly 75% leave the church after High school? Why? Because, they have found that the Bible is just bullshit. It does contain some wisdom- even as Carpetbaggers or other novels of Harold Robbins contain wisdom. But what is the over all teaching of the Bible or Christianity? That every man is born sinner, that he is condemned to eternal hell for mistakes in this one lifetime etc. No sane mind will accept such fantasies. Religion is not just faith in doctrine; that doctrine must stand rational scrutiny.Christianity failed this test since Enlightenment. Christianity cannot stand the light of reason. Hindus must study their books and raise such issues- right from virgin birth, the very fact of birth and historicity of Christ, etc instead of simply saying that all religions are true. There is enormous amount of literature on the absurdity of Christianity. 

As Hindus, we are not bothered what blessed religion or  blighted philosophy others follow. Whether they go to hell, heaven or elsewhere is their business, not ours! But when others bother us, we have to engage them and deal with them. We cannot pretend that everything is all right.

Gandhiji prayed for Sanmati. We need it, right now!

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