Dividing Line

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by opus125 in India, Indian History

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And some nights, Dividing Line, I swear it is so dark even God cannot see us.

partition3

You tore into our land
a crooked line.
That morning
we learned: the dawn
had been bitten by moths,
flying in droves, in madness
towards light. Unsure of the nature
of light, they had consumed
everything.

From above, we saw only
a silver abyss, one mile long,
either side plunged
in darkness—
the darkness of night, the darkness
of ash. We searched, sifting
the soil but found nothing.

We left, trying to preserve
at least memory. Our language,
like us, had no land.

~ ~

I say to a small boat
in black waters, alone
in infinity:

Whose pulse do you hold?
And what quivering
waters hold you?

Which direction
have you found forward?
What has lived in your past?

The wood darkens
with the night, until all
that is left is its silhouette.

There are no answers.
The air is empty, with nothing
to grasp.
In the distance, the horizon trembles
like a heartbeat.

~ ~

Tell them:
I have seen skin crushed
to a pulp, dead,
transparent as paper.
I have seen whole minds
turn to ash.
I have seen more water
than I understand,
seen humans claim
all light.

And some nights, I swear
it is so dark
even God cannot see us.

–Adeeba Talukder
An ekphrastic poem after the Zarina: Dark Roads exhibit.
Image: Flag of Independence 1947 by Jimmy Engineer

Ram Mohan Roy: Renaissance Man of Destiny

01 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by opus125 in Indian History

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Brahmo Samaj, Charles Grant, Edmund Burke, john Stuart Mill, Krishnachandra Banerji, Radha Kanta Deb, Ram Mohan Roy, William Bentinck

“The greatest creative personality of nineteenth century India” is how the Oxford History of India describes Ram Mohan Roy

A servant of man, pioneer, a cosmopolitan, “Ram Mohan Roy was “a philosophic modernist, a progressive religious thinker, anxious to emphasize the essentials of religion[1]”said Dr, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. For Gandhi Roy was “the father of advanced liberal thought in Hinduism.”

Ram Mohan Roy’s ideas bridged many contradictions.

He spread the seeds of spiritual renaissance that led to Independence, and yet welcomed Britain.

After 700 years of Muslim Rule he invited British education to rise up his people, yet Macaulay’s education reforms made “clerks, not statesmen… ‘black Englishmen’ … but not better Indians[2]” Yet failed, claimed Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, to “make the slightest impression” for 99.9% of the vast Hindu Samaj[3]”

His ideas were vast, he was more than any other man, claimed S, Cromwell Crawford, who compares his failures to Jesus. Like Jesus philosophy, his ideas were a seed.

Jesus ideas died in Palestine. Jesus ideas were recrafted by St. Paul and morphed unrecognizably beyond the Nazarene. So Ram Mohan Roys ideas have been claimed by different peoples and his image reshaped by different generations He is claimed by Intelligentsia, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, humanists, and the Brahmo Samaj

Long before I ever entered India he fascinated me, along with the list of reformers that led to Gandhi and beyond. Reform is far more than spouting a religious or political ideal.

Ram Mohan Roy was a champion of dharma, but Dharma is subtle as Bhisma famously said.

The Gita ideal of duty performed detached from the outcome can take many paths reveals the Mahabharata. Similarly, Ram Mohan Roy’s ideas bridged many contradictions. “Ram Mohan Roy considered it expedient to welcome the British as agents of modernization; but had India been strong, united and enlightened, love of the fatherland would have made him forcefully resist the flying of the Union Jack on Indian soil. “ wrote Crawford. At times it was expedient to condemn, other times commend his people.

Early Life

To understand him we must go back in time. We cannot condemn with the luxury of hindsight away from the pressures two centuries back. Nor see him heroically as “a modern Ullyses” to whom “all mysteries were unveiled, and all idols broken” compared to Voltaire, Volney Diderot and Herder[4].
Born in Radhanagar, Houghly District, Bengal in 1772 to an orthodox Brahmin family with the best education available. Bengal was the centre of British India, but the Mughal’s still ruled the north. Living standards plummeted as wars drained funds, Hindu and Muslim art declined. As the Mughals declined suttee, female infanticide and purdah among Hindu’s and Muslims increased. The ghosts of the Bhakti movement, and the syncretistic like Nanak or Kabir assimilated into new castes. Military ascetics terrorised the northern countryside.

But Ram Mohan’s grandfather Krishnachandra Banerji had been honoured as Raya Rayan for his service to the Nawab of Bengal. His father, a devoted Vaishnavite, was a chief of various districts and made wealth by renting a farm to the governments. He was later zamindar to the royal family of Burdwan.

Ram Mohan Roy was first educated at Patna, groomed for the Muslim courts. He praised Arabian logic, was inspired by the Quran’s monotheism and the character of the Prophet, and was fascinated by Arabian and Persian poetry.

Three years later he studied Sanskrit at Banares at the insistence of his maternal relatives who were, professional priests. At Banares he studied Vedanta, the Upanishads, Smritis, Tantra’s, and Puranas.

When returning home he questioned the validity of his families idol worship, and then left to Tibet where he is recoded to have debated for two or three years disputing with a devotee of “the living Lama”. There his experience taught him to appreciate women.

Returning home, unable to reconcile idols, he eventually left to Calcutta. leaving his wife and family in his mothers care.

His early writing argued true religion is rooted in human nature, and anything against this is a product of habit. Supernaturalism was called on to buttress invented dogmas by religious leaders seeking private glory. Detached from moral sense, rote learners of religion have lost their discrimination and made atrocities into a virtue. Preferring revelation, reason becomes a voice of Satan and fallacious arguments and legends bolster an imagined superiority.

But man has an innate capacity to rationally see the truth of one divine being and the brotherhood of all men.

Faith in God of superior understanding proves only the possibility of something, not the truth of any religious astringency . An overlord may allow different laws for different times or conditions, but could the Great Overlord make contradictory pronouncements: the worship of Hindu idols and simultaneously wage war on idolaters?

He would move into the East India company as a diwan, the highest post allowed for Indians, and be recognised or his honesty, integrity and acumen. He challenged the elitist disrespect of local custom and in Ragpur agitated against sati. He would serve the British government as an envoy in border disputes.

Significantly the speed in which he learned English. He wanted to study the English character and bridge two worlds.

Three British schools of thought

Edmund Burke was indignant at the East India Company’s officers flaunting their ill gotten exploitation of Indians. Besides his moral outrage, the behaviour of the tabob revealed a constitutional threat of mercantile Mughals on British politics.

Three approaches evolved. Conservative, liberal and Utilitarian (joined by Evangelicals) and the role of greater administrators who bridged these views.

Burkes Conservative approach demanded just rule adapted to fit the specific character and circumstances of the people. It prohibited rash interference in local institutions. In 1793 The East India Company rejected missionary William Carey because conversion would plant ideas of political unrest.

Conservative rule was supported by the Orientalists, pioneered by William Jones and Charles Wilkins. Jones postulated a common ancestry to Sanskrit and Classical European languages. Jones translation of Kalidasas Shakuntela astounded the English imagination. He placed the Mahabharat and Ramayan with Shakespeare claiming Indian art made her an equal to Europe but different. He promoted respect for other cultures and the eradication of cultural ignorance.

More liberal thought took three forms: To Liberals improvement meant Western education; the utilitarian : improvement good laws and to the evangelicals that joined them Christianity and conversion.

William Bentinck

The Liberal and evangelicals efforts resulted in the Charter of 1813 and the introduction of missionaries. Governor General of India, William Bentinck was influenced by strong willed reformers John Stuart Mill and Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham. Bentham argued “the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” Social reform had made great strides in Britain. Unrest had followed the abuses of the Industrial revolution and Bentham would push for reform, fearful of possible revolution. The Enlightenment and scientific progress had enlivened Britain Liberals believed India paralysed and moribund.

John Stuart Mill

Mills text was part of the East India Companies curriculum. Social reforms in India had been previously accidental. He stridently attacked the British East India Company, British ignorance and aggression imperialism and the evils inflicted on Indian society. Mill also expressed contempt for Indian societies abject arrested development. Mill claimed religious barbarism had structured every aspect of life, government, social position laws to the deity and philosophic discussion of the divine seemed fantastic, wild and irrational, not a product of cultivated reason. Before Macaulay, he claimed William Jones was wrong to praise India’s art and poetry as Britain’s equal. The Mahabharata and Ramayana were out of touch with the physical and moral laws of the universe. Hindu saints were bound by ceremony and not the moral upliftment of the people[5].

Charles Grant

While politically poles apart, Evangelicals equally sought the inner reform of society. For example, Charles Grant believed India deserved good government in return for the profits made by Britain “in order to continue to hold the advantage we derived from them.”

The British East India Company derives from the Christian Community so is duty bound o promote “the general welfare of the many millions of under its government.” However it was morally wanting compared to the “profound peace” under Aurangzeb. Improvement of government, and not its abdication, was required. Not just legislation but moral change of the evil ways rooted in the Indian people by its religion. Before Macaulay he promoted English education that would give temporal wealth and open away for the Gospel for Spiritual prosperity. Bishop Wilberforce, who helped remove slavery, supported Grants ideals.

However, the Charter of 1813 was uncritically accepted because it gave profit a righteous sanction and a pretence of morality to British rule. It was not blind to British injustice but claimed there was no alternative.

Thirdly, the Great administrators

With a foot in both camps included Mountstuart Elphinstone and Thomas Munro, preaching patience and caution.

Mountstuart Elphinstone

Elphinstone promoted reforms but the former diplomat did not agree foreign cultures were degraded. His second arrival to India was in 1819. In Bombay he observed “I doubt whether anybody could tell me what was good for the Maharattas. I was certain that I could not, an therefore I wanted to be taught by time.”[6]

The governor of Madras, Thomas Munro, reversed Cornwallis system of of zarmindas allowing peasants proprietorship..Because of his historical knowledge, he knew that the recent wars, and not moral or religious poverty taught by evangelicals, had ravaged the land.

Moving into the 19^th century, attempts to regulate European traders who had state like powers.

Ram Mohan Roys response

Ram Mohan Roy responded by a process of synthesis that encouraged internal development of the Indian people.

Within India, aristocrats be-cried the wrongful seizure of lands and the disruption of traditional values and practise. Different values prevailed: Europe treated war like science when Indian rulers considered it more a sport

Meanwhile, India’s new middle class responded to Europe in three ways: Orthodox, Radical and Liberal.

Radha Kanta Deb

The Orthodox accepted political but not a cultural submission. They held tenaciously to the past and ignored the future. At first Britain agreed and missionaries were minimal. But tensions would eventually explode in the 1857 revolt. A noted advocate of this position was scholar Radha Kanta Dob, who challenged Ram Mohan Roy and formed the Patitoddhar Sabha to reclaim converts back from Christianity.

The Radicals, or Young Bengals, from Hindu College were influenced by Anglo-Indian Henry Dorozio. To embrace Western rationalism. They studies the likes of Voltaire, Hume and Bentham and looked to a national future.

“By their integrity, dignified conduct and contentiousness coupled with intellectual ability, they enhanced the self respect and evaluated the moral stature of their society. They were men of honour in whom the nationalist sentiment – the love of India-first manifested itself” wrote historian Vincent A. Smith[7].

Yet they were too radical to last beyond 1840: they rejected the past and in protest were baptised Christians, ate beef and drank beer.

The liberals led by Ram Mohan Roy blazed the middle way. Liberals rejected both the cultural isolation of Traditionalists and cultural abdication of the Radicals. They would never eat beef, yet from 1815 to 1830, Roy would promote a (then) un-Indian concept of modern nationalism that had no precedent.

This was achieved through reason from the Upanishads .

“Once this was accepted the western challenge could be met face to face. Western loans would not involve eastern apostasy; loyalty and reform could go hand in hand” wrote Anglophile Victor Smith .

Ram Mohan Roy offered both the traditional riches and future hopes, Westernized and still Hindu.

Grateful for the ‘useful mechanical arts’ introduced by the West, but to science, literature and religion “I do not acknowledge that we are placed under any obligation.”

He argues that continued Indian loyalty depended on continuing the civil liberties granted under British rule. In particular, he argues for freedom of the press. Indian princes had kept people in darkness and this inspired revolt. Free press helps good government, he argues, by revealing the errorsor injustice of leaders because of our imperfect human nature.

In 1828, he supposes ‘one hundred years hence’, discourse with Europeans, will result in the rise of Hindu nationalism, especially on occasions when restrictive regulations are applied by the British.

“His attitude toward the West was neither that of surrender, or withdrawal, or conflict. It was one of comprehension. The new world from the West was not a substitute but a supplement to the old. Synthesis, which is different from syncretism, was his remedy for the predicament of Hinduism7”

This was possible because of the organic connection of profane and spiritual inherent in tradition and dharma. In the West, Descartes had separated profane and spiritual. Hindu religion has no separate domains.

“The more real religion is, the more concerned it is with its own overcoming” wrote S. Cromwell Crawford. Nothing is therefore profane or to crass that it cannot be sanctified[8]. “In the absence of this explanation, it is difficult to explain the Raja’s reforming genius.”

Although inspired by social Christian message, Roy would be discouraged by the elitist assumption – perhaps well meaning enthusiasm – that people will want Christianity. Christianity had its own history of religious violence.

The range of Ram Mohan Roys genius in religious, political, judicial administrative and economic reform as well as his philosophy of ethics is to vast for this article.

Ram Mohan Roy sought to lift his people from degradation to divinity, from superstition to rationality. His translations of the Upanishads lifted the dark veil of Sanskrit before Hindus and invited others to appreciate Hindu thought.

His promoting Hindu monotheism made him Hindu friends and enemies, and gave him a Western audience.

The Puranas and Tantras describe gods and goddesses, he said, but admit they are an aid for the less educated, of a greater harder to grasp divine unity. Idols have divided the people into Hindu sects, belief in the nationalism of Hindu that embraced one uniting god.. It was time to ditch them and return to the Veda’s monotheism.

Ram Mohan roy offered Indians a way out of the divisive corruptions while retaining Indian self respect by rediscovering Hindu monotheism. He argued that these were an ‘allegoric adoration’ which had over time developed a life of their own and covered the truth of the one supreme being.

To deify the natural forces in a phenomenological world divides experience. Humanising elemental forces we enter into the muddy world of sectarianism: whether of Krishna, Jesus, or Mohammad.

He used the same analysis on the Christian Bible. Many Christians were fascinated to learn of Hinduisms monotheistic roots. But when Ram Mohan wrote on the moral ethic of Jesus, many Christians objected that morality was not enough unless one accepts the Deity of Jesus in the Trinity. With extensive Biblical knowledge he demonstrated that belief in the One God with appropriate moral conduct was all that was required. From the Bible alone he argued strongly against the Trinity,

Magnanimous to those who Christians helped elevate the people he hoped they would return in kind, but was disappointed when they maligned everything Indian. The poor in Europe are equally uneducated he argued. The Bible describe God in anthropomorphic terms, so why derive Hindu texts for doing the same?

Proselytizing was a breach of ethics. Ram Mohan Roy reminds the British that they see themselves as guardians of justice, so why act like savage conquerors of former times?

On the surface there are differences between Hindu and Christian, but look in to the depths of each faith and you find more similarities.

As V.G Kiernan reminds us in The Lords of Human Kind, justified complaint rests not to what the British actually did, but to how they did it. British meddling fuelled the Indian reaction and resistance begun in 1856.

Mostly, as Nehru reminds us, British rulers were lilly-hearted bureaucrats who contemplated change only if it were safe.

Ram Mohan Roy however had a grand vision. He did not choose his circumstances, but spared no effort to liberalise them. He planted a seed, and its tree has spread and morphed over generations: perhaps beyond his ideas.

[1] From S.Cromell Crawford, 1984, Ram Mohan Roy: Social political and religious reform in the 19th century India, Paragon House Publishers.

[2] Acharya Ramadeva quoted bt Gandhiin Navajivan, 20-1-1929, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, VOL.44 :16 JANUARY, 1929 -3 FEBRUARY, 1929

[3] Ramesh Chandra Majumdar,On Mohan Roy, Asiatic Journal, 1973, p. 40.

[4] Sir Brajendra Nath Seals oration, “Ranmohan Roy: The Universal Man” 1933.

[5] In contrast, Gandhi argued Belief that sins were forgiven in Jesus removed responsibility of self improvement from a Christian but Hinduism taught responsibility in the karma doctrine.

[6] Quoted M. E. Chamberlain,1974, Britain and ndiaArchon Books, Connecticut.

[7] Vincent A, Smith p733, TheOxford History of India, ed. Percival Spear(3^rd ed. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1958). It is important to note Smiths wrote under colonial ideas that India needed European “benign” guidance.

[8] A Westerner may compare this to the Jewish concept of elevating the profanr to the spiritual realm through a mitzvah or commandment performed after a blessing.

Akbar to Independence and Beyond: Middle class India and after

26 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by opus125 in Indian History

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Alan Octavian Hume, Arya Samaj, Dadhabai Naoroji, Indian nationalism, Jawaharlal Nehru, John Murray, Louis Mountbatten, middle class nationalism, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Mohandas K Gandhi, Prarthana Samaj, The Indian National Congress

The 1857 Mutiny

Part four and finish of my early historic review toward Hindu nationalism, undertaken when I first arrived in India in an effort to understand her.

To large for one post, here is part four, revealing my thinking from the past. Click here to see Part 1 Akhbar to Derozio , or Part 2 Ram Mohan Roy to Macaulay. and part 3 Drabendranath Tagore to Vivekananda.

The rise of Indian nationalism was inspired by the rising Indian and Muslim middle class who success in the British system outweighed old school Muslim and Hindu.

However, following ‘the mutiny’ of 1857, British suspicions of Indian loyalty increased racial discrimination partly ‘justified’ by social theories inspired by Darwinism.

Highly educated Nationalist moderates had read English classics promoting justice, freedom and love of one’s country teaching Britain was providential; toward Indian self government.

Moderates attacked disparities but not British rule, placing them at a political disadvantage to extremist groups who could rally greater popular support under the banner of Indian symbols.

They demanded the rights and liberties of the British and constantly recalled Parliament and Queen Victoria’s promise that Indians could compete equally against English in the Indian Civil Service.

However, they were a more effective, but perhaps largely forgotten, force in changing British opinion. The first meeting of The Indian National Congress was fathered by sympathetic retired civil servant Scotsman Allan Octavian Hume.

“You are the salt of the land” wrote Hume in 1883 “and if amongst even you, the elite, fifty men cannot be found with sufficient power of self sacrifice, sufficient love for and pride in their country, sufficient genuine and unselfish heart-felt patriotism to take the initiative, and if needs be, devote the rest of their lives to the Cause – then there is no hope for india.”

Bombay born Dadhabai Naoroji (1825 -1917), ‘the grand old man of India’, was the son of a Zoroastrian priest whose descendants had fled Persia after Muslim conquest. His little used family name was Dordi meaning a twisted rope made of coconut husk.

“You may burn a dordi” said Naoroji “but you can never take the twist out of it. So it is with me. When once I form a decision nothing will dislodge me from it.”

Dadhabai Naoroji

The first Indian to achieve a professorship of Mathematics, serving twenty seven years at Bombay’s Elphinstone Institution, Naoroji moved to permanently to London to help the British become aware of India’s problems. He was the first Indian elected to the house of commons and pushed for a parliamentary commission into the financial administration of India.

Naoroji bitterly condemned the costly drain of British rule on India. He praised the abolition of suttee and infanticide, destruction of thugs, the ‘remarriage of Hindoo widows and charitable aid in time of famine” “of which any nation may be rightly proud.” Britain’s civilizing influence had no debit but more could have been done. The education of male and female, ‘though only partial’ and the ‘resuscitation of India’s own noble literature’, peace and morality, freedom of speech, railways and irrigation are to be praised.

There is generally “a slowly growing desire to to treat Indians equitably” but there have been “repeated breaches of promises” to give “natives” a fair share in administration.

“No greater calamity could befall India than for England to go away and leave India to herself” Naoroji claimed. However the ‘great moral evil’ was the drain British rule placed on India.

However, Europeans isolated themselves and were not the peoples “mental, moral or social leader, or companion”. They cannot enter Indian thoughts feelings or sympathies.

British came “acquire India’s money, experience and wisdom” and carry both away with them” when they return home leaving “India so much poorer in material and moral wealth” and their pensions, without training administrative and statesman to act as ‘natural guides of the rising generations in their national and social conduct’ for future generations.

Thousands are now educated but find no positions available for them in their motherland. Potentially, they are a ‘wild, spirited horse, without curb or reins’ that could recoil on the rulers.

With ‘culpable indifference’ every effort is made to extract taxation without adequate effort to ‘increase the peoples means to pay’.

Naoroji was thrice elected president to the Indian National congress (1886. 1893, 1906) and prominent in its first session in 1885.

He asked whether ‘the days of the Rajahs like the great Vikram’ or ‘the later empire of our friends, the Mahomedans’, ‘even in the days of the great Akhbar himself’ were as important as congress second session in 1886, praising the civilizing rule of the queen that ‘made it possible for us to meet in this manner’and for Naoroji to travel without fear for his family in his absence.

Rather than preaching sedition, ‘we are loyal to the backbone’ and Congress was ‘another stone in the foundation of stability of government.’

India’s ‘great misfortune’ was British not knowing their wants, calling on the British sense of ‘fair play and justice’ of making India both self supporting by either returning wealth to her or increasing India’s material position to be able to produce more income and satisfying India’s ‘reasonable and growing political aspirations to administer her own country.

While Britain rightly expected economic return on investment it was ‘economically rude and unintelligent’ to expect public works intended for future benefit to be immediately paid for by the present generation[1].

A businessman would not pay a manager more than he earned, yet demands to Britain exceed Indian production. In his many returns to India, Naoroji served as Chief Minister to the Princely state of Paroda in 1873- 74, to prevent the crown from annexing it for mismanagement.

Moderates promoted understanding between Hindus and Muslims and Bengali Surendranath Banerjea (1848 – 1926) exhorted young men to strive for unity as a patriotic duty.

Surendranath Banerjea

Called ‘surrender not’ Banerjea, the son of a Brahman doctor, he was one of the first Indians selected for Indian civil Service. Unlike the British, he was dismissed for a minor oversight, failed to have it overturned in London and failed to be admitted to the bar he returned to India convinced “the personal wrong done to me was an illustration of the impotency of our people” he was determined to spend his life “redressing our wrongs and protecting our rights, personal and collective.”

Calling young men “ the hope of your country” he used his oratorical skills to rouse Bengali and Punjabi to “lead worthy, honourable, and patriotic lives that we may all live and die happily and that India may be great.”

Just as Englishmen look back with ‘pride and satisfaction’ “when Hampden offered up his life for the deliverance of his own country, when Algerian Sydney had laid down his head on the block to rid his country of a hated tyrant.”

This principle of “Indian unity” was taught in the Punjab three hundred years ago by Nanak, ‘the immortal founder of the Sikh empire” who endeavoured “knit together Hindus and Musulmans under thee banner of a common faith.”

“We too must preach the great doctrine of peace and good will between Hindus and Mussulmans, Christians and Parsees” and all sectors of the Indian community, said Banerjea. We must meet on the “common platform …of our own countries welfare.”

“There is a common divinity, to whom we may uplift our voices in adoration. The divinity who presides over the destinies of our country” he said.

Discouraging blind loyalty to Britain, it is “unnecessary” to use violence to ‘redress our grievances. Constitutional Agitation will secure for us those rights, the privileges which in less favored countries are obtained by sterner means.”

He stubbornly apposed extremist calls against foreigners and started the tradition of welcoming imprisonment to demonstrated injustice after criticizing a judge.

Britain would grant self-government when India was prepared for it. We must take the community on “a process of steady and gradual uplift’ so there be“no sudden disturbance or dislocation” described as “the normal path of progress in Hindu society.”

Society is moving as was seen by changes to ‘the question of sea voyage, or child marriage, or even enforced widowhood’ and the ‘remarkable’ removal of ‘restrictions of caste’ including the now ‘not infrequent’ marriages ‘between hitherto prohibited sub castes of Brahmins and Kayasthas”. Twice president of Congress, he left it in 1918 to head the All-India Liberal Federation when younger congress members threatened to block the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms.

Maharashtran Mahadev Govind Ranade emerged from the Elphinstone Institution and the new Bombay University where he taught economics, history and literature. Appointed a subordinate judge in the government courts of Poona, he was barred from politics worked to reform child marriage, non marriage of widows and the seclusion of women.

: Mahadev Govind Ranade

Protected by the Western Ghats, the Maharashtran kingdoms were some of the last to fall to Europe. Established by the Marathi-Kunbi castes under Shivaji (1630? – 1680), the kingdom was ruled by his descendants, Peshwas (Prime Ministers) and later intellectual leaders of the Chitpavan Brahman caste. Even after the 1818 collapse of the Peshwa government Poona remained an intellectual centre.

An early member of the Prarthana Samaj, a prayer society modeled after Rammohun Roy’s Brahmo Samaj and founded 1887 following a visit to Bombay by Keshub Chunder Sen, Ranade admired Roy as a patriot and godly man and sought to keep its ties with Hindu society and gradually bring the orthodox around to its position.

In 1887 he founded the Indian National Social Conference and in 1890 the Industrial association of Western India.

He rejected the claim of the Brahmo and Arya Samaj for a revival of ancient faiths. In advocating a “return old ways, …old authorities and the old sanction …people speak without realizing the full significance of their own words.”

The past includes the Vedas, Smritis, Puranas, Mohuomaden and modern Hindu times. What ancient past should be revived? “Men and gods of the old days ate and drink forbidden things to excess” and lists past Nigoya system of brother in law marriage for widows. Or the eight forms of marriage that ‘included capture’, the sexual liberties ‘of the marital tie’ taken by Rishis and their wives. Or the ‘hecatombs of animals sacrificed’ “which human beings were not spared as propitiatory offerings” or flinging men into “rivers, or over rocks, or hook swinging, or the crushing beneath Jagannath car.”

Should Brahmins return to the past when they were beggars’ dependent on the king?

“A living organism, as society is, no revival is possible” argued Ranade.“Reformation is the only alternative open to sensible people”.

Revival may change the external. “It is not the outward form, but the inward form, the thought and idea which determines the outward form, that has to be changed if real reformation is to take place.”

Influenced by a social system that “set forth as isolation, submission to outward forms of power more than to the voice on inward conscience’ resulted in ‘perception of fictitious differences between men and women’, passive acquiescence” of wrong doing “indifference to secular well being, almost bordering on fatalism.”

“They prevent some of our people from being who they really are in all conscience, neither better or or worse than their fellows” he said.

Referencing Saint Paul, he says the past should be by “the fruits they have borne’ which Ranade calls ‘disastrous.’

Ranade encouraged cultivating ‘the spirit of fraternity or elastic expansiveness’ and not isolation. Every caste and sect’ splits itself off, teaching that knowledge and salvation is for an elect few. Ranade taught expanding your friends “towards a general recognition of the essential equality between and man. It will beget sympathy and power.”

Secondly, although we are ‘children of God’ he criticize being kept as children because someone in the past told you so. Rather than being helpless, he taught “that of freedom responsible to the voice of god in us.” There is “a divine principle enthroned in the heart of everyone’ and because of this power we have a duty to act.

Thirdly, “hereditary and birth explain many things, but this Law of Karma does not explain all things!” Rather than “enforce surrender” he taught ‘a new idea” that the “Law of Karma can be controlled and set back by a properly controlled will, when it has been made subservient to a higher will than ours.”

Fourth, Ranade denied that evil is inevitable in human life.

His patient, constructive, scholarly and devotion to Welfare inspired patriotism in hundreds of young man to whom he maintained constant correspondence inspiring Gokhale and Gandhi.

Reflections Post Independence

For five decades following Indian Independence, writer John Murray recorded changing social attitudes across the sub continent.He argued that in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign her consort Prince Albert inculcated a ‘respect for truth and honesty, justice, efficiency and dedication to ones duty[2]’ but self imposed cultural isolation of the British, their superior air and in some cases arrogance helped feed Indian nationalism.

Murray writes of Michael, one of the last surviving Indian officials of the Raj, reflecting on the ‘decline in values, the self seeking and intrigue, diminished sense of responsibility and the unsuitability of many of the appointments’ in India following 1948.

Under the British everything was well run, without bribery or corruption, claimed Michael. But I wonder if Michael was speaking cautiously, even subserviently, to a white man? The British were guilty of corruption – but to a far lesser scale, reflecting their smaller numbers.

Sadly, says Murray, ‘many positive values of the Raj hive off to sink like scraps in rough water, while less desirable elements of foreign rule such as exploitation and inequality, have not been vanquished in an egalitarian Utopia’.

Corruption is so bad Murray quotes a Cabinet Member from Bihar as reported in The Hindu, lamenting that ‘graft and corruption have become so rampant’ that ‘government employers do not dispose of work of even ministers without extorting bribes … Not a single official paper moved from one table to another unless the person concerned paid a bribe at each stage of its movement.’

Nehru August 15, 1947

Many Indian educated youth would wipe British colonial history as if a bad dream, writes Murray who believes Britain and India were destined to meet but that India undeniably belongs to the Indians.

Britain and India “had qualities that the other lacked and they complemented one another” like a chauvinistic male and a subservient female.

Gandhi’s success drew in part by calling on India’s strength of character and his ability to uncover the ‘flaw in the psyche of his opponent. He undermined the credibility of the British stance on many issues’ infuriating the British to ‘hopeless perplexity’ against Passive resistance.

‘Gandhi was aware of his opponent’s weaknesses, but he also knew that it was the basic decency of English representatives of the crown and members of the Indian civil Service that would enable him to win the battle against Britain.’

He respected British culture and values and ‘bore no ill will’ but confronted Britain with a spiritual-mindedness, patience and courage that gave him greater stature’.

Gandhi warning of catastrophe was sidelined by Lord Mountbatten’s determination to see a deal between Pandit Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah resulting in columns of terrified refugees crossing borders formed without consultation or without adequate warning. All in an area that had been in a state of civil war for months.

The result was the most brutal peacetime slaughter in human history that left scars on the psyche of both India and Pakistan.

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Northern princely states could decide on either nation and the Kashmiri born new Indian Prime Minister Nehru prevailed on the indecisive Hindu Maharaja Hari Sing to side with India following attacks by insurgent Muslim frontier tribesman who raped, pillaged and tortured en-route to the capital Srinagar.

The Maharaja did not hold a proposed plebiscite of the mainly Muslim region fueling Indian/Pakistan division that many Kashmere’s today use to feed their own desire of independence from either state.

Sadly, however, ‘a myriad unresolved factors in [India’s] ancient national psyche’ reactively become newsworthy while the quiet tolerant majority are ignored. Fundamentalists calling for a Theocratic State ‘threaten to fulfill India’s irrevocable destiny or send the nation spiraling off course.’

‘It is perhaps a singular Indian trait’ wrote India Today of March 31, 1990 ‘to look for scapegoats whenever the crying need is for brutal self criticism.’

Or does Indian need to again look within – as Ramakrishna, Ram Mohun Roy and others suggest – and draw on it’s Hindu Monotheistic tradition to overcome what Murray describes as an ingrained arrogance and indifference fueled by an India divided by caste or growing economic inequality?

I hope India – the land I call home – reasserts her soul.

[1] The same policy was applied to other colonies. For example, there was immediate pressure on the colony of New South Wales to be profitable.

[2] Murray, B., 2003,‘Reflections from an Indian Diary’, Wakefield Press, Kent Town

Akbar to Independence and Beyond: Debendranath Tagore to Vivekananda

25 Monday May 2015

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Brahmo Samaj, Dayananda Saraswati, Debendranath Tagore, Keshub Chunder Sen, Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Vivekananda

Part three of my early historic review toward Hindu nationalism, undertaken when I first arrived in India in an effort to understand her.

To large for one post, here is part three, from Debendranath Tagore to Vivekananda, revealing my thinking from the past. Click here to see Part 1 Akhbar to Derozio , or Part 2 Ram Mohan Roy to Macaulay.

Debendranath Tagore

Debendranath Tagore continued the spirit of Roy’s Brahmo Samaj with its monotheistic creed. Orthodox Hinduism teaches “The supremacy of the worship of Brahma, enjoining image worship for help of those who are incapable of grasping its highest truth.”

The Brahmo rejected any ”mediums, symbols or idols of any description” denying that any “book, man or image be in the way of direct communion with God.” Tagore increasingly used his intuition, arguing that the bodiless soul was in direct communion with God.

“By the soul shalt thou know the supreme soul.”

Rather, it taught ‘loving him and doing deeds pleasant in His sight … is worship” without rites and ceremonies deemed essential in religions.

He who adores God and loves man is ‘a saint’ live with good deeds and refuse to contend with others.

“Not by wealth, nor by children, but by renunciation alone, is immortality attained” he quotes explaining “renunciation is not renunciation of the world by becoming an anchorite, dwelling in the wilderness, but dwelling at home, and living in the world, all lusts of the heart should be cast out.”

Attaining God here on earth can be attained when lusts are cast out.

‘By example and precept” the Brahmo was to “hold up a beacon the highest truths of the Hindu shastras” to purify ‘our heritage’ by acting consistent with true faith we must respond sympathetically to our ‘orthodox brethren’ and ‘make every allowance for, and abstain from persecuting or alienating, those who think different from us.’

Our motherland is dear to us, he said, but religion is dearer. “Dharma is our friend in the Lord, and dharma is our guide to the next”

Keshub Chunder Sen

More radically proactive the Bengali Keshub Chunder Sen took Roy’s openness and Tagore’s intuition to and bought the Brahmo to its peak but also irrevocably damaged it. He said he was ‘baptized’ in the ‘religion of fire’ and the ‘doctrine of enthusiasm.’

Britain was divinely providential for India, claimed Sen, and self government will come to India when she is ready and able to make a reciprocal contribution to Britain. Loyalty required allegiance to queen Victoria and to the ‘sacred book’ of British paternal rule, he described as a ‘most sacred religious ceremony’ when Victoria took the title Empress of India.

“The Hindu notion of god is sublime” Kechub preached, an ‘infinite spirit‘ ‘dwelling in His glory, pervading all space, full of peace and joy” worshipped in “quiet contemplation”. The “Mohomeden” describe God as “infinite in power, governing the universe in supreme authority as Lord of all’, who is worshipped with “constant excitement and active service” as a ‘soldier, crusading against evil.”

He desired a ‘crusade’ against the caste system of India and the ‘obnoxious distinction between Brahmin and Sudra’.

Kechub dreamed of a religion that blended these qualities. He taught a New Dispensation, an Indian National church that could unite Hindu, Muslim and Christian.

India eats, thinks and breathes in an all pervasive Christian atmosphere, and Jesus and the apostles were Asians, he said.

Just as Jesus followed Moses, Paul and Peter drank the blood of Jesus and imparted it to other Christian saints, and ‘modern’ India has ‘eaten, assimilated and absorbed, making their ideas and character our own.’

“How Asia eats the flesh and drinks the blood of Europe. How the Hindu absorbs the Christian; how the Christian assimilates the Hindu!” proclaimed Kechub. “Cultivate the communion … and continuously absorb what is good and noble of each other.”

Keshub would leave the Brahmo Samaj, taking many with him, founding the BrahmoSamaj of india, but would later scandalize this group claiming it was Gods will his 13 year old daughter marry a Hindu prince contrary to the policy he formerly advocated of minimum age for Brahmo marriage.

Dayananda Saraswati

Just as energetic was the stern Bengali Vedic reformer, Dayananda Saraswati who rejected idolatry after practicing a Parthiva Puja. This ‘hideous emblem of Shiva’ “allows mice to run upon its body”. “I could not bring myself to believe that the idol and Mahadeva (Great God) were one and the same God”

He argued a reformist return to the four Vedas, “the sanhita – Mantra portions only”, which he described as “the repository of knowledge and religious truth” and “are the word of God.”

“They are absolutely free from error and are an authority unto themselves” he wrote.

He called for a return to the ’primeval eternal religion’ above the ‘hostility of creeds’ rejecting what was “objectionable and false”. He forcefully attacked idolatry, stating child marriage, untouchability, the subjugation and inequality of women were not sanctioned in the Vedas.

A man’s caste should be determined by his merit and not his birth, he said. Religious knowledge should be available for all, and not just the Brahmin.

Worship should be directed to the supreme spirit Brahma who permeates the entire universe, perfection of existence, consciousness and bliss, holy omniscient, formless, unborn, infinite, almighty, just and merciful.

“Mukti or salvation means deliverance … to get rid of all suffering, and to realize god, to remain happy and free from rebirth” he argued in debate with a Christian and Muslim. This attained by practicing truth, before God and ones conscience, to know and follow the Vedas, associate with men of ‘truth and knowledge’ practicing yoga to eliminate untruth from the mind, reciting and meditating on the qualities of God, and to pray to god ‘to be steadfast in truth(gyana), realization of the reality of dharma, to keep one away from untruth, ignorance and adharma, and to free one from the woes of birth and death and obtain mukti.”

Man suffers because of his own sins and not because of Adam. Christianity limits god to that of as man who is either responsible for evil, or powerless with Satan, or Adam, he said. The Christian and Muslim God is “like a man’ with limited knowledge.

But God is unlimited, argued Saraswati, and is in no need of a prophet.

Still Saraswati could praise Western rejection of child marriage, and marriage by personal choice, the education of both boys and girls, representative assemblies and action following consultation, sacrifice for the nation, and faithfulness to duty, supporting fellow British in trade and keeping to their own fashion rather than being swayed by exotic fashion unlike English copying Indians.

At times extravagant – he claimed electricity was mentioned in the Vedas – and extremely strong, he could be acrimonious and was forced to defend himself from cobras, swordsman and thugs eventually killed when he attacked a Prince’s loose living and the woman in question had his milk laced with ground glass.

His militancy was continued by the Arya Samaj that he founded.

Ramakrishna

Perhaps the most saintly was Bengali Shri Ramakrishna (1836 – 1886) who retained his simplicity and devotion to Kali preaching a gentle faith of selfless devotion to god and ultimate ecstatic absorption in the divine. He lived in near constant meditative ecstasy, seeing meaning in the smallest incidents or seeing sita in a seeing a harlot. He experienced his first mystical trance at seven.

After 12 years of discipline at the new Hooghly river temple at Calcutta he experienced God as the Divine mother, Sita, Rama, Krishna, Mohammad and Jesus worshipping each according to their tradition.

He advised to live in the world but to fix your mind on God.

The Vedas claim ‘this world is like a chandelier, and each jiva (individual soul) is like a light in it.’

“Everything is the mind” said Ramakrishna “you can dye the mind with any colour you wish.”

“If you keep your mind in evil company, your thoughts ideas and words will be coloured with evil; but keep in the company of Bakhtas, then your thoughts ideas and words will be on God.”

If you are bitten by a snake and assert with strong conviction you are cured you will be cured.

He criticized a Christian book “in it there as only one them – sin and sin, from beginning to end” claiming the same ‘main topic’ for KeshubSen’sBrahmo-Samaj. ‘He who repeats day and night: “I am a sinner, I am a sinner,” becomes a sinner indeed.’

God dwells in us all, so we should love all mankind, but to the wicked you ‘bow at a distance” remaining calm at all times and “it is necessary … to keep occasionally the company of holy men”.

Ramakrisna used many ‘parables’: He compared our belief that we have dependant power to a child thinking boiling vegetables are alive in a pot, or a marionette. We should nor elevate ourselves because we are god, because god is also in the elephant blocking our way, or the elephant driver.

Holy men are like observers of a game of chess – better able to assess the play than the comp[editors attached to the games outcome.

A man convinced in the power of his gurus name, used it and walked on water. Hearing this the guru thought he was ‘very great and powerful, entered the water and drowned.

“When a wound is perfectly healed, the slough falls off itself; but if the slough be taken off earlier, it bleeds. Similarly, when the perfection of knowledge is reached by a man, the distinction of caste fall off from him, but it is wrong for the ignorant to break such distinctions.”

Ramakrisna’s western educated, Calcutta born disciple Narendranath Datta (1863-1902) became Swami Vivekananda. Born to a Kayastha family of lawyers he gave up material pursuits and studied as a sannyasi for 12 years.

In 1893 he spoke at the first world Parliament of Religions in Chicago, then toured Britian and the USA for four years. He returned India a hero setting out to regenerate his fellow Indians, enhance cultural pride and calling on them to become great by living by the highest of Indian values.

The world goes through changes in the material and spiritual planes and Europe had reached a material height and it was time for a spiritual adjustment. “In no distant date” he alleges, Indian oriental spiritual truths will “bring unto mankind once more the memory of his real nature.”

“To the Oriental the world of spirit is as real as to the Occidental is the world of the senses.” Each claims that the other is dreaming.

Man is to conquer nature, wrote Vivekananda to the Maharajah of Mysore in 1894, not just the external, physical nature, as seen by the occident, but also the “ majestic, internal nature of man, higher than the sun, moon and stars”.

“Spirituality must conquer the West” and “everyone must be ready for the conquest of the world by India” aided by ‘heroic workers’ who self sacrificingly ‘disseminate the great truths of Vedanta.’

Spiritual truth of Vedanta must be given to the West so that each nation and individual may work his own salvation.

While “no country in the world has so many laws” as the USA ‘in no country are they so little regarded.’ Rejecting their own traditions, many ‘learned priests’ are now interpreting the Bible in light of the Vedas teaching of ‘the eternity of both soul and creation, and God as our highest and most perfect nature.”

However, the material Westerners “never think beyond their own selfish ends” and could not care if Indians live or die.

His zeal to serve the downtrodden helped breach the divide between other nationalist leaders who were perceived as Western setting a pattern for later leaders like Gandhi.

He calls for independence of the unmanly aping of Western standards with rich and poor embracing pride in their heritage to strengthen their nation. Many Indians idealize the West but have never lived there to experience its problems. Some Indians ashamed of their poverty are like lesser European nations dressing like the British and ignoring their cultural nobility.

India has observed Western science ‘dazzling the yes with brilliance of Western suns’ with ‘rank materialism, plentitude of fortune, accumulation of gigantic power’ is also heard ‘discordant sounds’ in low ‘unmistakable accents, the heart rendering cries of ancient gods, cutting her to the quick.’

The contrast to the ‘shameless freedom’ of Western independence to the Indian goal of Mukti (renunciation) with stern vows , fasting’s, retreat, samadhi and the ‘search after self’ leads to the question “Here, in this world, of death and change, O man, where is thy happiness?’

New India is torn between the right to choose one’s spouse and the old idea that marriage is ‘not for sense enjoyment’, but ‘perpetuation of the race.’ This is responsible for society’s future and so society should be able to dictate marriage choice.

Blindly imitating an others ideas prevents these ideas from becoming India’s own. Western success is like the brilliant success of a short lightening strike. Nor is India perfect, and it must also learn.

Vivekananda illustrates India’s aping of the West with a short of told by Ramakrishna of a man who faulted the Hindu shastras but then suddenly one day praised the Bhagavad Gita. “Me thinks some European pandit has praised the Gita, and so has also followed suit.”

‘What is good or bad is not decided by reason, judgment, discrimination or reference to the shastras” but whether it is praised by ‘a white man’. While religious customs should be discussed, throwing our ‘Gods and Goddesses into the river Ganges’ because of ‘the disapproval of Westerners’ is not.

According to Vivekananda the ‘caste system is good. That is the only natural way of solving life.’ Isis natural that man will form themselves in groups. ‘There will always be caste.’ God is within a both a man who mends shoes or governs a country.”But that does not mean that there should be these privileges. They should be knocked on the head.”

There should be equal chances for all. Vedanta should be taught equally so that ‘everyone will work out his own salvation.’

He refused to condemn idolatry, arguing for religious reform ‘which truly means to be made ready or perfect by necessary cleaning or repairs, not by demolishing the whole thing.’

‘If you are fit to worship God-without-Form discarding any external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same.’

Part 4 will discuss y rise of Indian Middle class nationalism .

Akbar to Independence and beyond: Ram Mohan Roy to Macaulay

24 Sunday May 2015

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Ram Mohan Roy, Thomas Babington Macaulay, William Jones

Part two of my early historic review toward Hindu nationalism, undertaken when I first arrived in India in an effort to understand her.

To large for one post, here is part two, from Ram Mohan Roy to Macaulay, revealing my thinking of the past. Click For Part 1, from Akbar to Derozio With a more retailed review of Ram Mohan Roy’s philosophy and the political debates of the time here.

Ram Mohun Roy (1772- 1833) strongly presented methods for the British too improve government in India.

Ram Mohan Roy offered Indians a way out of the divisive corruptions while retaining Indian self respect by rediscovering Hindu monotheism. He argued that these were an ‘allegoric adoration’ which had over time developed a life of their own and covered the truth of the one supreme being.

He also argued successfully against suttee, or widow burning and in doing so praised women who had been described as contemptible, uneducated and prone to mischievous female passions.

Roy argued it is wrong to criticize women for being uneducated when men denied them the opportunity and points to many educated female elite ‘celebrated for their thorough knowledge of the Shastrus.’ Rather than ‘want of resolution’, a women who would submit to being burned alive while has more resolve than men who would flee from this death.

Women are universally more faithful to their friends and their men, he said. Women ‘virtuously endure’ ‘mental miseries and constant quarrels’ caused when husbands marry many wives – often for financial advantage only to neglect them for the favour of a preferred spouse. Treated severely for the smallest fault, they are forced to eat the insufficient remnants after the men.

He had a high regard for the Christian humanitarian ethic, which he believed was ‘likely’ to improve hearts and minds – but clearly argued that Hinduism was not inferior. He strongly rejected the trinity – even persuading a minister of its falsehood – and carefully studied and even translated the Christian texts into Sanskrit and Bengali.

While recognizing that the early church proselytized its message he criticized Indian missionaries who – unlike the apostles – preached as members of a ruling class who submitted with fear. He points out that the Greeks Romans, Moghuls all criticized the gods of the people they subjugated, as Christians criticized ‘Asiatic effeminacy’.

Christians depreciated the ‘sublime mysteries’ of Hinduism, but Mohummud Roy, notes that Christians equally cannot explain the mystery of the trinity. Roy criticizes Christians who turn a deaf ear to reasonable contrary opinions, the laws of nature, human reason and divine revelation.

Grateful for the ‘useful mechanical arts’ introduced by the West, but to science, literature and religion “I do not acknowledge that we are placed under any obligation.”

He argues that continued Indian loyalty depended on continuing the civil liberties granted under British rule. In particular, he argues for freedom of the press. Indian princes had kept people in darkness and this inspired revolt. Free press helps good government, he argues, by revealing the errors or injustice of leaders because of our imperfect human nature.

One of the Britain’s lasting legacies was sponsoring English education. Although he was a highly skilled linguist, Roy, argued for an English, rather than Sanskrit, education system. English is best suited to needed real knowledge, and practical science and ‘Baconian philosophy.’

Sir Willliam Jones

Orientalist, Sir William Jones (1746 – 1794) praised the rich, melodious and eloquent languages of India, claiming there was a rich demand for their study and a dearth of books. These languages had been neglected, few in the West appreciated their value or ‘some detest the Persians , because they believe in Mohomed.’ Jones hoped ‘languages of Asia, will be studied with uncommon ardour’, however, Roy, claimed these complex languages was a lifelong study of “learning concealed under this most impervious veil’ with insufficient reward for the long hours of labour.

Thomas Babington Macauley, who decided for government funded English studiestook a utilitarian approach.

“We have a fund to be employed as government will direct for the intellectual improvement for the people of this country” he wrote. “The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it?”

Macauley sees value in Asiatic poetry, but claims to have never met an Orientalist who equates Arabic or Sanskrit it as good as European verse.

Macauley does not share Roy’s high estimation of science or literature . He had never found one orientalist ‘who could deny that a single shelf on a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

While sadly depreciating Asiatic literature and science, his approach simply recognized that education revolutionized Russia and the demand to learn English was far higher than for oriental languages by the Indian peoples themselves.

Funds have limits and it is better to teach English to a class, who will appreciate the works of Hume and Milton, even learn Greek to study Herodotus and Sophocles, and who can translate government directives to the rest, he said. Sanskrit is mostly for religious study and not government funding.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Macaulay’s hoped for classically educated elite would renew appreciation for Hinduism and inspire Indian national pride. Just as Kabir and Nanak addressed the 15^th and 16^th century Muslim idea that all believers are equal before God, a resurgent reform toward Hindu monotheism responded to Western secularism and Christian missionaries.

British rule gave Indians an unprecedented opportunity that many Muslims were slow to accept, resentful of the Moghul decline and suspicious of religious corruption. Edwin Arnolds translation of the Gita and Sanskrit scholar Max Muller glowing estimation of the Indian mind inspired pride. The Theosophy Society spoke of reincarnation and Karma. It would move to Adyar, Madras.

Eventually, as we will see in part 3, the most sincere simple devotees would inspire Hindu belief more than the West or skilled Indian orators.

Akbar to Independence and beyond: Akbar to Derozio

23 Saturday May 2015

Posted by opus125 in Indian History, Religion & Spiritualty

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Abu Taleb, Akbar, Akhbar, Ananda Rangi Pillai, Henry Derozio, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, The Harp Of India

India is a land of hurt substance and of antique opulence but her full time arrived and now she seeks serenity through the reinvention of her past.

I wrote those words when I first arrived in India, and to understand her, summarized her changes in thought. My opinion have moderated through my Indian experience.

To large for one post, here is part one, from Akbar to Derozio, revealing my thinking of the past.

Dynasties rather than nations had ruled ancient India, although Ashoka, Samudragupa and Harsha held the loyalty of vast areas.

The Moghul emperor Akbar (1542- 1605) established a durable administrative system, and seventy five years after Vasco de Gama landed on the Malabar Coast, Akhbar enquired of the wonders, manners and customs of Europe. A font of spiritual and physical knowledge claims his biographer, AbulFazl,he “wished that these inquiries might be the means of civilizing (istinis, familiarity or sociability) this savage [unsocial] race”. He met with missionaries from Goa but was happier with his 300 wives that Christian monogamy.

The degenerating Mughul empire collapsed internally and following the passing of Aurangzeb was subject to Persian and Afghan attack. Each Hindu and Muslim prince sought a piece of the former empire but the British would emerge a dominant European ruler after supplanting the French.

There is an old false stereotype that a dynamic Christian world conquered a near vacuum of pagan illiterates with no history worth mentioning[1].

Rather, “Western European peoples struggled to emerge from feudalism, the merchants and manufacturers won the support of the state as a way of making the various nations stronger” claimed Gilberto Freyre[2].

Resulting technological innovation led to “European ships with their square-rigged mainmast sailed closer to the wind,” whereas ““Muslim and indigenous ships on the Indian Ocean sailed only with the monsoons” wrote Lucille Brockway.

“Muslim ships could not carry guns and still relied on boarding parties in naval battles. After centuries of borrowing from the East, European science was being translated into superior technology—better charts, navigational instruments, ships, and cannon.”

“Exchanging oarsmen for sails and warriors for guns meant essentially the exchange of human energy for inanimate power. By turning wholeheartedly to the gun-carrying sailing ship the Atlantic peoples broke down a bottleneck inherent in the use of human energy and harnessed, to their advantage, far larger quantities of power. It was then that European sails appeared aggressively on the most distant seas [Cipolla 1965:81].

Europe had no luxury items to trade with the East, except firearms, resulting in a drain of gold and silver throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of India, Braudel (1966:569) quotes a Venetian merchant: “Silver goes where the pepper is.”

Nevertheless, “Hindu princes who were resisting Moslem invaders were eager to buy European guns and Arabian horses transported to India on Portuguese ships” wrote Brockway.

One of the supporters of the French was the Hindu agent Ananda Rangi Pillai (1709 – 1761) who shows a total absence of national consciousness. Rather he identifies with French interests. Although he strongly rejects the impropriety of a feast where each religious group and caste was represented together simultaneously as a corruption although each groups requirements and beliefs were respected. The Muslim trader, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (1752- ?) recognizes errors that have kept into many Muslims life and criticized the pride and indolence of the British. Blind faith causes the British to wait until misfortune strikes rather than prepare and prevent it.

Mirza Abu Taleb Khan

He criticizes the worldliness, irreligion and love of luxury of the British but admits that since land ownership is so well protected in Britain it encourages people to work hard to live later years off the fruits of their labour.

In particularly he notes the ‘peculiar idea’ of the British that perfection is ‘merely an ideal quality, and depends entirely on comparison.’ In future ages the ‘exalted dignity’ of Newton will be looked back ‘as we now do on the rude arts of savages.’

Henry Derozio (1809- 1831) argued that if it is wrong to discuss the existence of God it is wrong to debate against the non existence of God. The theistic Derozio was dismissed from a Hindu school for presenting arguments for and against God – and criticized the Hindu ‘clamour’ over logical debate.

Yet in his poetry he portrays a romantic picture if Indian former glories, while lamenting its then present state calling for an Indian nationalism – as in his poem The Harp of India– and calling for the day when educated youth will overcome the forces of orthodoxy.

The Harp Of India

Why hang’st thou lonely on yon withered bough?
Unstrung for ever, must thou there remain;
Thy music once was sweet — who hears it now?
Why doth the breeze sigh over thee in vain?
Silence hath bound thee with her fatal chain;
Neglected, mute, and desolate art thou,
Like ruined monument on desert plain:
O! many a hand more worthy far than mine
Once thy harmonious chords to sweetness gave,
And many a wreath for them did Fame entwine
Of flowers still blooming on the minstrel’s grave:
Those hands are cold — but if thy notes divine
May be by mortal wakened once again,
Harp of my country, let me strike the strain!

Click for Part 2 Ram Mohan Roy to Macaulay.

[1]2002 (1979) Brockway, Lucille H., ‘Science and Colonial Expansion – The Role of the British Royal Botanical Gardens’ Yale University Press. London

[2]Reprinted from “The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: Concepts of comparative analysis,” by Immanuel Wallerstein, Cambridge University Press. 1974.

Empire was an idea, not a geography

21 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by opus125 in Indian History

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Adivasi, Alain de Botton, Aristotle, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Francesca Hughes, Georges Perec, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Hooke, Schrödinger

British India 1893

The power of an idea split the USA from a culture similar to its own. and Pakistan from India. Empire was also an idea of the Enlightenment and Christendom.

Experiments on James Cooks Endeavour voyage of 1769-70 demonstrated the life saving power of hygiene and the science of Enlightenment. At first there was grudging respect for Mughal power, but as British men “went native” to marry Hindu and Muslim girls, Britain fought back and hardened its attitude. Sati and child marriage had been campaigned against by the Hindu reformer Ram Mohan Roy as against true Hinduism.
Science and the Enlightenment also challenged religion and tradition.

Rousseau in The Social Contract contrasted civil society and natural existence: instinctual, amoral justice versus justice and morality; .appetite and natural liberty versus civil liberty and Possession based on personal power with secure proprietorship based on respect for the law; and individual strength versus general will.

Order and law defined civilized society. “The mere impulse to appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law, which we prescribe to ourselves, is liberty “wrote Rousseau whose ideas shaped how Europe viewed indigenous peoples: India’s Adivasi and Australia’s Aboriginee.

The British lost more men to disease in India than anywhere else in the Empire: order and science must defeat Indian Chaos.

But any idea taken to extremes becomes a dinosaur.

Ilya Prigogine demonstrated systems move toward entropy until they either break down or recreate a new system of order[1].

Lutyen’s architectural ambitions intended to surpass Versailles and outlast Rome. Britain’s imperial resolve mirrored a scientific idea that drove a civilisation, but entropy caught up with Britain, and Lutyen’s eternal symbol of empire was handed back to India.

Meanwhile, there was a simultaneous a scientific conquest that created order from chaos.

The first planes were wood, at times flying albatrosses, light and flyable, but wood has its vagaries, Wood was unpredictable and error prone. Wood may hide a treacherous knot, explains Francesa Hughes[2], who contrasts Imperial struggle of order against chaos with science.

Metal could be moulded and was predictable and true. Metal was a pure form and wood its anathema.

The rejection of the organic, remains. We look to predictions as symbols of truth, and not at the natural laws themselves. It is too easy to assume a theoretical cause that does not exist.

“The rejection of organic materials that marked the material tolerance crisis central to modernity didn’t just produce the steel and glass architecture we know so well, but also a generation of newly metalized aircraft that were so heavy they could not fly. These engineered dodos, which resulted directly from architecture’s ideological reconfigurations around predictability and precision, ask of us difficult questions about the role of inference and approximation in instrumental rationalism, and about the exemption from cultural and sociological explanation we reserve for the technological artefact: what if it doesn’t work?”
– Franscesca Hughes

Until technology caught up, metal aircraft were stuck on the tarmac, uUnable, or when they could fly, so heavy with fuel there was little hope for passengers.

But technology caught up and metal planes now fly. Aircraft became the symbol of metallic rationality and utilitarianism.

Now, technological determinism and instrumentalism, like British need for authoritarian law over “chaotic” India, now controls our lives. We plug the data in the computer ‘black box’ and out comes a decision to guide our moral imperatives.

Like metal plans being better than wood, but cannot fly, being better than wood planes that could, and forced technology o grow.

That is the power of an idea.

Lets back track a few centuries

When 17th century Robert Hookes peered at a needle under his microscope he discovered sharp is not sharp at all. The precise edges he expected did not exist.

We now know that precision is not what it seems. The pursuit of the absolute has scientific, as well as artistic and ethical considerations. A small error can evolve into greater crimes say the theologians.

Now nano-science can pursue the microscopic, or Widen our perspective and a spot disappears from our view, but it remains. Return to the microscope and we discover a delirious void and an exaggerated gap between ideal and reality.

Modernity has a heightened fetishing of precision. Out television screens saturate our eyes with slippery resolution; our new metal sculptures are moulded to curves once not possible.

But precision is, as Hookes showed, imprecise.

Two millennia ago Aristotle[3] preached precision is subject to a pure form but matter is subject to error. A concept I find echoed in the archetypal forms taught in mysticism, and the debates of Hindu Vedanta.

Science requires precise specifications lest it slip into sloppiness and ‘bad science’. Its ideology colonised the vacuum of ignorance.

But as we learned more our logical assumptions were found not to be precise. Even scientific institutions like to hold onto models even if discoveries find their exactitude is redundant.

Who drives the need to be so precise? Why the masculine conquest of line, when nature curves in feminine curvaceousness? What we call precise now will be challenged by newly discovered errors.

In the early 20^th century the liquid intelligence of concrete allowed us new forms. Before the concrete truck, saw concrete made on site, and without regulations and standards, easily became a hard messy mass.

There was need to control error: regulations and automation followed. The labour force disappeared but the concrete remained. The more we cornered error, the more we feared it.

When once we poured in the slurry and out came concrete forms, we now input data and our computer offers us new design. The linearity of mass production, and the illusion of precision has fear as it’s by product.

Scientific models can be blind. It is people who make cities work, and not mathematic models. Scientific precision need be more intelligent and interactive, democratic, to balance human behaviour versus law, the power of the privileged versus the people.

It requires an artists sensitivity to, as sculpture Barbara Hepworth suggests, hear through the chisel, the shape of stone.

Native Princes Arriving in Camp for the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi, 1877

Science is shaped by and shapes societies worldview.

Europe had undergone its own shift with nature: Darwin challenged mans aloofness from nature, Charles Lyell, whose book Darwin was reading on the Beagle, aged the rocks eons before Adam was said to walk the earth. On the one hand, Darwin was misused to exploit tribes, on the other people sought to help them.

Historically, how colonists constructed the primitive in reality mirrored their own social problems.

It is appropriate Francesca Hughes examined precision of the micro. Schrödinger’s “What is Life” as an example of life finding order from the error, she said. Schrödinger argued the chromosome was architect and builder of the craft in one: a code that can code itself.

A code unlike a physical form is not subject to matter, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics degeneration of order into chaos[4]. Before Francis Cricks discovery of DNA, the chromosome was a black box of an unexplained mechanism.

Crick went on to claim genetic determinism was the “dogma” of modern biology. We ignored the cytoplasmic evidence to follow a doctrine of causal linearity. We dismissed the ‘white noise’ of genetic error, when even i In the 1960’s the same DNA material could grow a different organ in a Petri dish.

The primacy of the genes shaped science as the primacy of metal shaped fight. We now have flight suits made of polymerised fabrics. We now know genes do change.

“If yes then A. “If no then B” Are we doomed to live life like a flow chart?

Will the allegory of syntactic connections dodging syntactic secretaries leads us up to our Sisyphusian doom down the corridors of anxiety. The question is mapped out by Georges Perec, in his 1968 novel The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise. Written in a breathless, punctuation free monologue, is an “endlessly ludicrous IFTTT loop”” its precision is its undoing. It is an wherein the if-this-then-that logic has completely unravelled, as embodied in t[a] flowchart”.

Are we to be caught in a loop of repetition, or is our humanness found in the error of redundancy? Or are we headed to scientific conditioned control of Aldrous Huxley’s Brave New World, conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs to like our social place and dislike what the government decides is bad.

“Is counting safe?” Lichtenstein asks, answering “only if the pieces don’t change.” After all, scientific models are ingenious approximations. They are maps, and the map is not the territory.

Data is like money. Money offers you freedom and slavery, It offers the means of personal agenda and the fear it can be lost.

The symbolic DNA of Britain’s ethical claim to authority was the right to rule. A belief held right up to Churchills time, that Christendom was a political expression of the Kingdom of God on Earth. But politics is prone to the entropy of economics and populous opinion. Life – like prophecy – is not linear and Luyten’s eternal city would be handed back to India.

I am reminded of Alain de Botton’s words in The Architecture of Happiness

“A development which spoils ten square miles of countryside will be the work of a few people neither particularly sinful nor malevolent. They may be called Derek or Malcolm, Hubert or Shigeru, they may love golf and animals, and yet, in a few weeks, they can put in motion plans which will substantially ruin a landscape for 300 years or more.

The same kind of banal thinking which in literature produces nothing worse than incoherent books and tedious plays can, when applied to architecture, leave wounds which will be visible from outer space. Bad architecture is a frozen mistake writ large. But it is only a mistake, and, despite the impressive amounts of scaffolding, concrete, noise, money and bluster which tend to accompany its appearance, it is no more deserving of our deference than a blunder in any other area of life. We should be as unintimidated by architectural mediocrity as we are by unjust laws or nonsensical arguments.”

It is also true of Colonial architecture, even when grand and beautiful. Empire, like its architecture, was inspired by an idea. So is modernity. Will it inspiregreatness or mediocrity?

[1] Prigogine, Ilya (1997). The End of Certainty. New York: The Free Press.
[2] Francesca Hughes, The Architecture of Error: Matter, Measure, and the Misadventures of Precision, MIT Press, 2014
[3] Aristotle Metaphysics
[4] I question this assumption. It is behind the idea that mass less information could theoretically tracel faster than light and time- trave. But code requires energy and E=MC² means energy is a form of matter.

imperial idea?

21 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art, Indian History

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Edwin Landseer Lutyens, Fatehpur Sikri, Francesca Hughes, New Delhi, Raisina Hill, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sanchi, Thomas Metcalf, Vastu Purusha

A trip to Delhi is incomplete without viewing the Government Precinct at Raisina Hill. Past the Martyrs Wall, you look across to Parliament, the Lok Sarbha. There stands, the Viceroy’s House, designed by Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944), a landmark of “Imperial resolve” that has been “redeemed” as the Rashtrapati Bhavan, or President’s House.

“In 20,000 years” boasted Edward Baker, “there will be an imperial Lutyens tradition in Indian architecture as there now clings a memory of Alexander.”

Lutyen’s set out to create the greatest city the world had ever known.; a symbol of the precise running of empire against the chaos of India. But like the sinking Titanic, lost the same year Lutyens began his two decades of construction, the Empire would be lost. The Titanic’s claim of unsinkability matched the realities of history. Societies boast in pomp as they begin to decline. The USA economy had already surpassed Britain’s.

Lutyens resolve mirrored a scientific idea that drove a civilisation. So grand was the original scheme, that Lutyens was forced by Lord Harding to reduce the building from 370,000m³ to 240,000 m^3.

Yet it remains “the grandest of all the residences that the British built in India, for a brand new capital had 340 rooms, covered four and a half acres and included twelve separate internal courtyards, making it probably the last of the great royal palaces of history” [1].

Perspective View of the South Elevation of the Viceroy’s House ( ByWilliam Walcot, 1914

Located for the “road system based on two great roads”, claimed colleague Herbert Baker [2](1862-1946), Satish Sharma[3] more cynically describes it “an act of imperial cartography”.

“Whether accidentally or by design, Lutyens created the new capital in the exact shape of the traditional Vastu Purusha [the god of construction, whose supine form determines the best metaphysical plan of a building site], whose head is on Raisina Hill and whose feet rest at the Purana Quila [the oldest fort in Delhi][4]“

Imperial order sits above the chaotic mass of the Old City.

Meanwhile, delicate India designs hide an Imperial skeleton.

Built of “the same red sandstone that the Moghuls had used at Fatehpur Sikr [the ancient fortified city close to Agra] interspersed with cream stone from Dholpur, Bharatpur and Agra, in brilliant horizontal bands of colour accentuating the horizontal emphasis of the whole edifice” wrote Davies[5]. But the sandstone was reinforced by the fruits of British iron, steel and concrete which Scriver[6] describes as “the utlimate ossification of the provisional ‘scaffolding’ with which the colonial polity had been assembled.”

He adds: “What remained of the aborted project of colonial social engineering was only the hollow facade of imperial authority and system, propped up by the skeletal cage of its own technical superstructure.”

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From Alexander onwards, India has always mollified her conquerors.

The capitals look like Corinthian, but closer they are carved with acanthus leaves and small hanging Indian bells, like temple bells.

Lutyens who never liked Oriental Classicism never admitted that the Byzantine raised copper-clad central dome, with its octagonal turrets encircling a pierced stone drum , had an Indian motif. But look again and see the 3rd century BCE Buddhist stupa of Sanchi that Britain restored from1912 to 1919.

As Thomas Metcalf suggests ,this symbolically “provided a way of evading the communal tangle of Hindu and Muslim[7]“

It’s endless arched corridors “seemed to run through the house like sumptuous warrens” wrote Jan Morris . I remember the Mughal designed chuja inlayed in red, that shades a colonnade from sun and monsoon, loggias and jail shade the north east wing.

But the basement floor plan, projected onto a screen as I listened to Francesca Hughes during a visit to Brisbane, that inspired this article. The floor plan revealed precise planning for all culinary contingencies. Ms Hughes was promoting her book, The Architecture of Error[8], to illustrate how the pursuit of precision drove Western science.

“Architecture’s already precocious tools “ Hughes said, were used “for managing its unique fear of physical error would redefine precisions relations to the truthfulness.” “These tools, and the fears they barely conceal, intersect in the seminal technological and cultural crises that mark architecture’s twentieth-century and the exponential rise in redundant precision that it witnessed. “

I was immediately reminded that Britain’s imperialism was driven by the Enlightenment. The technology of the sailing ship released men from oars to guns when Muslim ad Chinese ships still rowed.

The question of precision and error has colonised our pursuit of knowledge as a science helped colonise a world periphery to Europe. Joseph Banks, the botanist on Cooks voyage that charted the transit of Venus across the sun, had returned to Britain with unique plant specimens. He would go on to lead the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, and Britain’s pursuit of new resources like rubber, and Indigo. He suggested New Holland be colonised and the Aboriginal natives would welcome Britain’s ways to improve their life. He also took Indigo from the Americas because it would be cheaper to produce in India.

As we discuss in the next article, Empire was an idea, not a geography.

[1] Morris, Jan, with Simon Winchester. Stones of Empire: The buildings of the Raj. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
[2] Baker, Herbert. “The New Delhi.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. Vol. 74, No. 3841 (2 July 1926): 773-793
[3] Sharma, Satish. “Imperial Delhi: Imagined, Imaged, Iconized.” Indian International Centre Quarterly. Vol. 33, No. 2 (Autumn 2006): 27-32.
[4] Buch, M. N. “Lutyen’s New Delhi: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” Indian International centre Quarterly. Vol. 30, No. 2 (Monsoon 2003).29-40
[5] Davies, Philip. Splendours of the Raj: British Architecture in India 1660-1947. London: Penguin, 1987.
[6] Scriver, Peter. “Empire-Building and Thinking in the Public Works Department of British India.” In Colonial Modernities: Building , Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon. Eds. Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2007. 69-92.

[7] Metcalf, Thomas R. An Imperial Vision: India’s Architecture and Britain’s Raj. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[8] Francesca Hughes, The Architecture of Error: Matter, Measure, and the Misadventures of Precision, MIT Press, 2014.

Does the Mahabharata ask us to defy society?

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by opus125 in Caste & Social position, Indian History, Religion & Spiritualty

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Detachment and war, gita morality, religious violence

The Gita inspired the Independence Movement: the Gita inspired both Tilak’s call for violent over throw and Gandhi’s clarion for non violence. Aurobindu spoke of Tantric passion in his call for independence, and puritan Victorians responded (unfairly)that Indians were over sexualised, and early marriage weakened their mental disposition.

Media wars are nothing new, I believe this was behind William Sleeman’s linking the Thuggee phenomenon to Kali. Later British linked the Independence movement too it.

“The Hindu student, depraved . . . by too early eroticism, turns to the suggestiveness of the murder-monger and worships the nitro-glycerine bomb as the apotheosis of his goddess.”

A century back, Valentine Chirol the independence movement “in its extreme forms Shakti worship finds expression in licentious aberrations which . . . represent the most extravagant forms of delirious mysticism” (Indian Unrest , 1910).

These attacks have led some to reject Western science when it attempts to place the ancient past on a timeline. I would love the past golden to be discovered scientifically: Article 51 of India’s constitution includes as the duties of a citizen developing a scientific temper.

But if it cannot be, does it matter?

A retired Indian Army Colonel once advised me not too worry. “We cannot even prove that Krisna even existed. But that is not the point. The message of the Gita us timeless. It is outside of space and time.”

What I might call an archetype, a coded message in our psyche. What Jean Houston would describe “something that never happened but is always happening.” A legend – that is the key on the side of our mental page that allows us to read our psychic terrain to go beyond the image (or the computer screen) to access the real life.

Perhaps we can learn lessons from the repeating pattern of past ages . Fractal patterns of history repeat with their own its own unique echo in modern history.

But looking at these lessons from the position of objective witness we can embrace life without falling into self loathing guilt trip of failing to be good Hindu’s, Muslims Christian etc.

Guilt is a cry for help. So I can sympathise with the bhakti call for a religion of no religion similar to what Krishna describes in the Bhagavad Gita (18:66). “Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear.”

However, let’s think a little more pragmatically.How could we personally apply the Gita’s advice ?

Karna confronts Krishna

The question haunts me. The themes of karma and Krishna’s grace contradict each other and the Gita leaves enough room for both sides: a little bit more than how the later bhakti movement is now interpreted .

Krishna proclaims “Those who are envious and mischievous, who are the lowest among men, I perpetually cast into transmigration, into various demoniac species of life” (16,19). Also: “Those who worship me and surrender all their activities unto me, being devoted to me without hesitation, engaged in devotional service and meditating unto me, I deliver them quickly from the ocean of birth and death” (12,6-7).

Yet his ‘Avatar’ is subject to karma, killed when shot on his own ‘Achilles heel’ in the Mahabharata. Karma seems to move on with detached clockwork precision. This leads to the Gita leaving unexplained the contradictions between Vaishnavism’s claim that Krishna is only an incarnation of Vishnu wheras the Gita’s super-personal Krishna is the Supreme Lord of the Universe (5,29), eternal (4,6) and the source of all existence: “I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from me” (10,8). , spiritual and material (9,16-19; 8,4; 10,20-42) even contrary to Vedanta, the source of Brahman (14,27) and contrary to Vaishnavism he is the instrument of attaining fusion with Brahman (14,26). Although the intention of components.

Then there is the personal decision we face like Ajuna.

Do we obey duty or dharma verses the karma we must face if we do our duty against our conscience. Krishna tells Ajuna “When you become confused in your false ego you say to yourself, ‘I will not fight’ you are misled. By your nature you must fight” (18,59). Action is better than inaction we are told, the three gunas of Krishna’s past karma, and his warrior caste, determine his nature or prakriti. Our past karma is the hand we must play in the game of life which limits our choices.

Ajuna must break the Vedic code by killing his relatives. “Those who think that they can kill or those that think they can be killed are confused in the manifestations of ignorance. The infinite, immortal soul can neither kill nor be killed” (2,19). Therefore Arjuna is free to kill his relatives, considering them only temporary abiding forms for the eternal self, mere mortal frames.

Or as S. Dasgupta states in his commentary:

The theory of the Gita that, if actions are performed with an unattached mind, then their defects cannot touch the performer, distinctly implies that the goodness or badness of an action does not depend upon external effects of the action, but upon the inner motive of action. If there is no motive of pleasure or self-gain, then the action performed cannot bind the performer; for it is only the bond of desires and self-love that really makes an action one’s own and makes one reap its good or bad fruits. Morality from this point of view becomes wholly subjective, and the special feature of the Gita is that it tends to make all actions non-moral by cutting away the bonds that connect an action with its performer.
-S. Dasgupta, Indian Philosophy, Motilal Banarsidass, 1991, vol.2, p. 507.

But if “actions are performed with an unattached mind, then their defects cannot touch the performer” then why does Yudishthira, Arjuna’s brother, try to expiate the sin of killing his relatives at Kurukushetra through repentance, gifts, asceticism and pilgrimages (Mahabharata 12,7). Yudishthira bad conscience could not be cleansed by a right mind, he needed compensatory acts.

Does not a morality that any act is good as long as it is dedicated to God risk becoming the justification of terrorism? If God controls all could I not decide, as Ajuna is asked to do, to reject well-established moral codes?

The demon Kamsa, whose corruption of karma Krishna came to destroy, used the same argument to kill the children of Krishna’s parents in the Bhagavata Purana;

In the bodily conception of life one remains in darkness without self-realization, thinking “I am being killed” or “I have killed my enemies”. As long as a foolish person thus considers the self to be the killer or the killed, he continues to be responsible for material obligations, and consequently he suffers the reactions of happiness and distress.

Perhaps Krisna, whose avatar comes to destroy Kamsa intends to fight fire with fire.

If the same “detached” perspective on moral values can be used both by the demon Kamsa, who caused the corruption of the dharma, and by Krishna as the divine avatar who came to restore it (Gita 4,6-7) and kill the demon, it is hard to accept that such an approach could represent a true basis for morality.

This I suppose where we as a society and individually must balance the competing forces of life, lest the eros of fanaticism and nationalism takes over.

True detachment is does not stop with nihilistically accepting reincarnation to justify defiance, violence or terrorism.

We must be fully prepared to take the full consequences of our Karma. To go inside and listen.. We must accept communion with the unborn and unmanifest the whisper of the soul can be heard.

As the victors at Kurukshetra reflected

“Alas, having vanquished the foe, we have ourselves been vanquished in the end! The course of events is difficult to be ascertained even by persons endued with spiritual sight. The foes, who were vanquished have become victorious! Ourselves, again, while victorious, are vanquished!” Mahabharata Sauptika Parva Section 10

The Greatest Experiment in Democratic History

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by opus125 in Indian History

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1952 Indian General election, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sukumar Sen

I once read a report of a man who struggled miles to vote in India’s first General Election.

He arrived late. The polls were closed he was told.

Undeterred the man begged and pleaded for his chance, and the official relented directing the man so he could make his mark in history.

“Oh no, you decide!” he insisted. “I am uneducated for such matters.”

The honour of voting mattered. For so many for once people felt important.

It speaks of a time when hope still inspired but the wounds of Partition were still fresh. Angry refugees from East and West Pakistan were not yet settled in their new homes. The Andhras in the south and the Sikhs in the north were getting restive. The Kashmir question was, in the eyes of the world, still unresolved.

As the campaign commenced, Jawaharlal Nehru, had just survived a challenge to his leadership of Congress, but after Vallabhbhai Patel’s death he was both dominant figure and the target of all opposition. Independence had not as yet made any dent in the problems of poverty and inequality, and Congress may be held responsible.

Consider the headlines during the campaign

‘MINISTERS FACE STIFF OPPOSITION’ read a headline from Uttar Pradesh. ‘CASTE RIVALRIES WEAKEN BIHAR CONGRESS’, read another. From the north-eastern region came this telling line: ‘AUTONOMY DEMAND IN MANIPUR’. From Gauhati came this one: ‘CONGRESS PROSPECTS IN ASSAM: IMPORTANCEOF MUSLIM AND TRIBAL VOTE’. Gwalior offered ‘DISCONTENT AMONG CONGRESSMEN: LIST OF NOMINEES CREATES WIDER SPLIT’. A Calcutta headline ran: ‘W. BENGAL CONGRESS CHIEF BOOED AT MEETING’ (the hecklers being refugees from East Pakistan). ‘NO HOPES OF FREE AND FAIR ELECTION’, started a story datelined Lucknow: this being the verdict of J. B. Kripalani, who claimed that state officials would rig the polls in favour of the ruling party. And the city of Bombay offered, at three different moments in the campaign, these more-or-less timeless headlines: ‘CONGRESS BANKS ON MUSLIM SUPPORT’; ‘CONGRESS APATHY TOWARDS SCHEDULED CASTES: CHARGES REITERATED BY DR AMBEDKAR’; and ‘FOURTEEN HURT IN CITY ELECTION CLASH’.

But there was also the occasional headline that was of its time butemphatically not of ours -notably the one in the Searchlight of Patna which claimed: ‘PEACEFUL VOTING HOPED [FOR] IN BIHAR’.

Ramachandran Guha

Nehru’s theme

Nehru’s theme of his second campaign speech, with Gandhi-like breadth delivered on the Mahatmas birthday spoke of the government’s determination to abolish both untouchability and landlordism. Communalists were the chief enemies, who ‘will be shown no quarter’, and ‘overpowered with all our strength’. ‘If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both at the head of the Government and from outside.’

Elsewhere he deplored the ‘monster of casteism’. Congress was also a vote for its foreign policy of principled neutralism.

He was patient toward his left-wing critics, whose ends he shared but not their revolutionary means: ‘we can build the edifice of Socialism brick by brick only’, he said. He was sorry to be in opposition to the Socialist Party, which, ‘contains some of my old intimate friends whom I admire and respect.’

He asked the women to cast off their purdahs and ‘come forward to build the country’.

He admired some of his opponents, former colleagues, like Ambedkar, Kripalani, and Jayaprakash Narayan. ‘We want a number of [such] men with ability and integrity’, he said. ‘They are welcome. But all of them are pulling in different directions and doing nothing in the end’.

The Congress symbol of a “‘Pair of bullocks carrying a yoke”

Nehru spoke to about 20 million people directly

In the course of his campaign Nehru addressed 300 mass meetings and myriad way side ones. He spoke to about 20 million people directly, while an equal number merely had his darshan, eagerly flanking the roads to see him as his car whizzed past. Those who heard and saw Nehru included miners, peasants, pastoralists, factory workers and agricultural labourers. Women of all classes turned out in numbers for his meetings.

Sometimes there was a sprinkling of hostiles among the crowd. In parts of northern India Jana Sangh supporters shouted out at Nehru’s rallies that he was not to be trusted because he ate beef. Coming across a group of communists waving the hammer and sickle, Nehru asked them to ‘go and live in the country whose flag you are carrying’. ‘Why don t you go to New York and live with the Wall Street imperialists?’ they shot back.

But for the most part the people who came to hear Nehru were sympathetic, and often adulatory.

A Congress booklet exaggerates, but not by very much:

[At] almost every place, city, town, village or wayside halt, people had waited overnight to welcome the nation’s leader. Schools and shops closed: milkmaids and cowherds had taken a holiday; the kisan and his helpmate took a temporary respite from their dawn-to-dusk programme of hard work in field and home. In Nehru’s name, stocks of soda and lemonade sold out; even water became scarce . . . Special trains were run from out-of-the-way places to carry people to Nehru’s meetings, enthusiasts travelling not only on foot-boards but also on top of carriages. Scores of people fainted in milling crowds.

Press reported on the popular mood. When Nehru spoke in Bombay, a procession, mainly of Muslims, marched to Chowpatty to the accompaniment of pipes and cymbals. It was headed by a pair of bullocks and a plough (the Congress symbol). Everywhere, crowds started collecting from early morning for talks scheduled for the afternoon; almost everywhere, barricades were broken in ‘the enthusiasm to catch a glimpse of Mr Nehru’. After he finished his speech in Delhi, Nehru was met as he came off the dais by a famous wrestler, Massu Pahalwan, who offered him a gold chain and remarked, ‘This is only a token. I am prepared to give my life for you and the country.

The media was much taken with a Telugu-speaking woman who went to listen to Nehru speak in the railway town of Kharagpur. As the prime minister lectured on she was consumed by labour pains. Immediately, a group of fellow Andhras made a ring around her: the baby was safely delivered, no doubt while the mid wives had an ear cocked to hear what their hero was saying.

1951:The first Indians to vote

Negi, then 34, was India’s first ever volter. At 97 he voted in the 2014 elections. “Mujhe aaj bhi who din yaad hai. Woh khushi, woh garv (I still remember that day. The joy, the pride)” he said.

The first Indians to vote in a general election voted on 25 October 1951. They were a group of were a group of Buddhists in the tahsil of Chini in Himachal Pradesh, voting just days before the winter snows shut their valleys from the world.

“The villagers of Chini owed allegiance to the Panchen Lama in Tibet, and were ruled by rituals administered by local priests. These included gorasang, a religious service to celebrate the completion of a new house; kangur zalmo, a ceremonial visit to the Buddhist library at Kanam; menthako, ‘where men, women, and children climb hills, dance and sing’; andjokhiya chug simig, the interchange of visits between relatives. Now, although they didn’t as yet know it, was added a new ritual, to be performed at five-year intervals: voting in a general election.”

It was the same day that Winston Churchill returned to Office, ousting Labour in the UK General election. But the rest of India did not go to the polls until January and February 1952.

The excitement of being allowed to vote

A blind voter assisted at the Jama Masjid.

The highest turnout, 80.5 per cent, was recorded in the parliamentary constituency of Kottayam, in present-day Kerala; the lowest, 18.0, was in Shahdol in what is now Madhya Pradesh. Nationwide, about 60 per cent of registered voters exercised their franchise, this despite the high level of illiteracy.

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A scholar from the London School of Economics described how a young woman in Himachal walked several miles with her frail mother to vote: ‘for a day, at least, she knew she was important’. A Bombay-based weekly marvelled at the high turnout in the forest districts of Orissa, where tribals came to the booths with bows and arrows. One booth in the jungle reported more than 70 per cent voting; but evidently the electoral commissioner Sukumar Sen had got at least some things wrong, for the neighbouring booth was visited only by an elephant and two panthers. The press highlighted the especially aged: a 110-year-old man in Madurai who came propped up on either side by a great-grandson, a 95-year-old woman in Ambala, deaf and hunchbacked, who still turned up to vote. There was also the 90-year-old Muslim in rural Assam who had to return disappointed after being told by the presiding officer that ‘he could not vote for Nehru’. A nonagenarian in rural Maharashtra cast his vote for the Assembly election, but fell down and died before he could do the same for Parliament. And there was a vindication of Indian democracy in the electoral roll of Hyderabad, where among the first who voted was the Nizam himself.

One place in which there was especially brisk polling was Bombay. Delhi was where the rulers lived, but this island metropolis was India’s financial capital. It was also a very politically aware city. Altogether, 900,000 residents of Bombay, or 70 per cent of the city’s electorate, exercised their democratic right on election day. The workers came in far greater numbers as compared to the fashionable middle class. Thus, reported the Times of India, ‘in the industrial areas voters formed long queues long before the polling stations opened, despite the particularly cold and dewy morning. In contrast to this, at the WIAA Club [in Malabar Hill], which housed two polling stations, it appeared as if people straggled in for a game of tennis or bridge and only incidentally to vote’.

A villager checking the party symbol of his prefered candidate.

The day after Bombay went to the polls it was the turn of the Mizo hills. With regard to both culture and geography there could not have been a greater contrast. Bombay had a great density of polling stations: 1,349 in all, packed into just 92 square miles; the Mizo, a tribal area bordering East Pakistan and Burma, required a mere 113 booths spread over more than 8,000 square miles of territory. The people who lived in these hills, said one scribe, ‘have not known any queues hit her to except those in battle arrays’. But they had nonetheless ‘taken a strong fancy’ to the exercise, reaching their booths after walking for days on ‘perilous tracks through wild jungles, camping at night on the way amid song and community dances around the fire’. And so 92,000 Mizos, who ‘have through the centuries decided an issue with their arrows and spears, came forward to give their decision for the first time through the medium of the ballot’.

An American woman photographer on assignment in Himachal Pradesh was deeply impressed by the commitment shown by the election officials. One official had walked for six days to attend the preparatory workshop organized by the district magistrate; another had ridden four days on a mule. They went back to their distant stations with sewn gunny sacks full of ballot boxes, ballots, party symbols and electoral lists. On election day the photographer chose to watch proceedings at an obscure hill village named Bhuti. Here the polling station was a school-house which had only one door. Since the rules prescribed a different entry and exit, a window had been converted into a door, with improvised steps on either side to allow the elderly and ailing to hop out after voting.

At least in this first election, politicians and the public were both (to quote the chief election commissioner) ‘essentially law-abiding and peaceful’. There were only 1,250 election offences reported. These included 817 cases of the ‘impersonation of voters’, 106 attempts to take ballot papers out of a polling station and 100 instances of ‘canvassing within one hundred yards of a polling station’, some of these last offences doubtless committed unknowingly by painted cows.

the biggest experiment in democracy in human history

Chief election commissioner Sukumar Sen

The chief election commissioner Sukumar Sen suggested the vote would be ‘the biggest experiment in democracy in human history.’

Indeed, many doubted Universal suffrage could work in a land of such high illiteracy. A respected Madras editor complained ‘A very large majority [will] exercise votes for the first time: not many know what the vote is, why they should vote, and whom they should vote for; no wonder the whole adventure is rated as the biggest gamble in history’.

A recently dispossessed maharaja argued that any constitution that sanctioned universal suffrage in a land of illiterates was ‘crazy’. ‘Imagine the demagoguery, the misinformation, the dishonesty possible’, said the maharaja, adding, ‘The world is far too shaky to permit such an experiment.’

Even Nehru, who – unusual for politicians, could see both sides of the question – realized the problem but remained committed to universal suffrage.

His doubts disappeared with victory.

‘My respect for the so-called illiterate voter has gone up. Whatever doubts I might have had about adult suffrage in India have been removed completely.’

The new American ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, was also impressed. Arriving in Delhi in autumn of 1951, he confessed that he was ‘appalled at the prospect of a poll of 200 million eligible voters, most of whom were illiterate villagers’. He ‘feared a fiasco’, even (as the Madras Mail put it), ‘the biggest farce ever staged in the name of democracy anywhere in the world’. But a trip through the country during polling changed his mind. Once, he had thought that poor countries needed a period of rule by a benevolent dictator as preparation for democracy. But the sight of many parties contesting freely, and of Untouchables and Brahmins standing in the same line, persuaded him otherwise. He no longer thought literacy was a test of intelligence, no longer believed that Asia needed a ‘series of Ataturks’ before they would be ready for democracy. Summing up his report on the election, Bowles wrote: ‘In Asia, as in America, I know no grander vision than this, government by the consent of the governed.’

India has – for all her problems – remained a largely successful democracy. So many other newly formed nations have allowed military to have some say in government resulting in coups. When we consider the allegations of electoral corruption that haunt post colonial societies world over, the success of India’s first General Election stuns the imagination.

A visiting Turkish journalist admired Nehru’s decision not to ‘the line of least resistance’ and follow other Asian countries into ‘a dictatorship with centralisation of power and intolerance of dissent and criticism’. Nehru had ‘wisely kept away from such temptations’. Yet the ‘main credit’, according to the Turkish writer, ‘goes to the nation itself; 176,000,000 Indians were left all alone with their conscience in face of the polling box. It was direct and secret voting. They had their choice between theocracy, chauvinism, communal separatism and isolationism on the one side; secularism, national unity, stability, moderation and friendly intercourse with the rest of the world on the other. They showed their maturity in choosing moderation and progress and disapproving of reaction and unrest.’

The reporters figures are a little awry: only 107 million of 176 million electors actually took the trouble to vote. However, he was so impressed “he took a delegation of his countrymen to meet Sukumar Sen. The chief election commissioner showed them samples of ballot boxes, ballot papers and symbols, as well as the plan of a polling station, so that they could work to resume the interrupted progress of democracy in their own country.”

Another group of heroes were praised by Lucknow sociologist D. P. Mukerji:‘great credit is due to those who are in charge of this stupendous first experiment in Indian history. Bureaucracy has certainly proved its worth by honestly discharging the duties imposed on it by a honest prime minister.’

The irony is that Nehru, when imprisoned by the Bureaucracy in 1935 complained of the “progressive deterioration, moral and intellectual, of the higher services, more especially the Indian Civil Services.” Fifteen years later, Nehru was obliged to place the polls in the hands of men he would once have dismissed as imperialist stooges.

As Ramachandran Guhu[1] wrote “In this respect, the 1952 election was a script jointly authored by historical forces for so long opposed to one another: British colonialism and Indian nationalism. Between them these forces had given this new nation what could be fairly described as a jump-start to democracy.”

[1] This article is a precis of Ramachandan Guhu’s India after Gandhi: The history of the world’s largest democracy 2007, MacMillan, London.

Reflections of India

~ by facing my shadows

Category Archives: Indian History

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More liberal thought took three forms: To Liberals improvement meant Western education; the utilitarian : improvement good laws and to the evangelicals that joined them Christianity and conversion.

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The Harp Of India

Empire was an idea, not a geography

But any idea taken to extremes becomes a dinosaur.

Lets back track a few centuries

Science is shaped by and shapes societies worldview.

“If yes then A. “If no then B” Are we doomed to live life like a flow chart?

imperial idea?

From Alexander onwards, India has always mollified her conquerors.

The Greatest Experiment in Democratic History

Consider the headlines during the campaign

Nehru’s theme

Nehru spoke to about 20 million people directly

1951:The first Indians to vote

The excitement of being allowed to vote

the biggest experiment in democracy in human history

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Early Life

Three British schools of thought

More liberal thought took three forms: To Liberals improvement meant Western education; the utilitarian : improvement good laws and to the evangelicals that joined them Christianity and conversion.

Thirdly, the Great administrators

Ram Mohan Roys response

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Reflections Post Independence

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The Harp Of India

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But any idea taken to extremes becomes a dinosaur.

Lets back track a few centuries

Science is shaped by and shapes societies worldview.

“If yes then A. “If no then B” Are we doomed to live life like a flow chart?

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From Alexander onwards, India has always mollified her conquerors.

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But if it cannot be, does it matter?

However, let’s think a little more pragmatically.How could we personally apply the Gita’s advice ?

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Consider the headlines during the campaign

Nehru’s theme

Nehru spoke to about 20 million people directly

1951:The first Indians to vote

The excitement of being allowed to vote

the biggest experiment in democracy in human history

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Like this:

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