Yesterday (10-Dec-2011) was a day when the earth witnessed the celestial phenomenon of a lunar eclipse. In India this spectacle is met with trepidation. In some scriptures belonging to the literary heritage of the country, eclipses (solar or lunar) are considered to be inauspicious. Their cause is said to be the result of a fight between gods and demons. Therefore some practices such as seeing them, having food or stepping out of the house while they are in progress are forbidden. Furthermore rituals to eradicate the ill-effects of eclipses such as bathing, fumigation etc. after the eclipse is over are prescribed.
Now, one might think that people of India today know better about the cause of eclipses – they in fact being the result of the relative positions of the Sun, Earth and the Moon. And since the cause is known, presumably the effects are known as well and they are not at all as dire as was thought in the past. The effects are very few and temporary. The effect of the moonlight being blocked by the Earth is no different than it being blocked by a cloud (and the same goes for sunlight).
However the conservative opinions are still prevalent. They have grown weaker probably but tenaciously persist. Our cook asked us in the morning if she should cook food for the evening. (I said yes). I took time to explain the cause of the eclipse and that there is no need to fear it. She said that she worked at another house where they had asked her not to cook and she was merely confirming our feeling regarding the event. During the course of the day I heard of a communication from one quarter of my family to another instructing not to have food between 6 and 10 pm that evening.
My wife and I had stepped out to catch a movie that evening (Puss in boots – quite entertaining). While returning home, she was surfing through FM radio stations for some entertaining fare. She alighted on a station run by the government which was presumably running a program about the eclipse. Apparently this was a call in program where listeners could call in with their opinions. One such call was in progress. I asked my wife to hold the channel for a while. The caller not very coherent but was clearly in support of the conservative opinion. He was stating the ancient scriptures had held a certain opinion on the effect of eclipses. He then said that to ignore these opinions was a folly. After all our ancestors were not fools – they had produced great works and practices such as Ayurveda and Yoga which were presently being studied by the West for knowledge. Therefore we must not ignore their teachings. He further went on to say that presently what was happening was that the Indian youth were veering away from seeking knowledge from the scriptures and were attracted to a western education whereas westerners were now studying ancient Indian texts for knowledge and wisdom. This he termed as ironic and regrettable and concluded his opinion. The presenter thanked him for his opinion in honeyed words.
This set me thinking. I consider myself a liberal person. I am interested in the growth and development of my country (and the world as well). I am against practicing or spreading ideas just because their source is our heritage (cultural or literary). I prefer to examine the ideas afresh and take an opinion on them. However not everyone in my country thinks like me. So I thought about why that may be so. I have formed some ideas in this regard. Below I present my thoughts on the reason why the old ideas still persist, what is their effect and what in my opinion should be done.
Why do old ideas still persist?
In a large part of India, education levels are low. So it is likely that people hailing from those parts have not heard of the scientific explanations to many phenomena. But they do have knowledge of the old ideas because those ideas are present in the culture they grew up in and so imbibed them.
But the really surprising thing is that even people who have had education in the method of science and use it to earn a living still believe in the old ideas. I think that this is an aftereffect of the event of colonization of India.
Every person has an ego. Everyone wants to feel worthwhile, have a feeling that they are somebody. Everyone wants to feel respected and have prestige in the society. Everyone wants to be powerful and have control over their destiny. No one wants to be weak, trodden upon or humiliated. This feeling is extended to things that we identify ourselves with – our family, language and nation. Everyone wants their family, language and nation to be great. In fact this feeling even extends to history. Everyone wants to be part of an impressive history – of great crowning achievements, impressive literature, buildings, heroes etc. Indians are no exception. Every Indian wants India to be the best of countries – a superpower no less. (And this is the same for people of any country of the world).
However the colonization of India is an event that is very unpleasant to contemplate for someone who has a lot of ego invested in the idea of India and her greatness. It is akin to a proud person being enslaved. No doubt there are strong feelings associated with the event. It is painful to discover that someone else is better than oneself so comprehensively in so many areas of human endeavour. For some it is a shameful period and they are very angry that it should be part of their history.
India was colonized by the British. The British at that time were more advanced in science and technology than India. (“Why this was so” has got some interesting answers but that is a topic for another day). Indians found that they were no match for their colonizers in the important things such as military power, medicine and technology in general. In matters concerned with the material world, their colonizers were better. This combination of a proud ego on the one hand and a clear shortcoming in ability to sustain it caused two things to happen.
Firstly, Indians became desperate for anything that could support or bolster their ego. They found some things that could help them. The greatest balm they found was spiritualism. Ironically the thing that gave importance to spiritualism was the fact that some Europeans were interested in it as they were fascinated by the assumed mysticism of the orient. To Indians it was – hey Europeans are interested in it – and it is ours – so it must be something we must be proud of. Yoga was another such thing.
Secondly, Indians began to reject (largely indiscriminately) ideas (economic, educational, cultural and scientific) that came from the west and tried to find substitutes in our own culture for those ideas. Some of this was good for Indians (because there were a lot of ideas about eurpoean superiority that would have done Indians no good) – but in some cases it led to rejection of something good such as the method of science.The result of the above two reactions are visible today. Some things, usually having an Indian ancient origin, are held in high esteem with a fervour bordering on fanaticism that is quite unnecessary. Ayurveda and Yoga are in this list in addition to Spiritualism, the “Indian” family values, Vedas, Puranas etc. There is a passive aggressive rejection of ideas that emanate from or have a root in the west. The English language, science where it contradicts with the first list, the “allopathic” medicine system which is misperceived as a western idea instead of a scientific one are some examples.
I have also observed that there is a tendency to gloat gleefully at the west whenever a chance presents itself. A steady stream of scorn is directed at the lack of western family values, their obsessive materialism, lack of spiritualism etc. This too I think is a side effect of the passive-aggressive attitude.
What is the effect of the above?
The effect of colonization has introduced a bias in Indian discourse.
There are two basic effects. Firstly, Indians may put too much faith in ideas and practices that have come from tradition and are not fruitful (perhaps the practices are detrimental or do not yield as much value as other ideas). Secondly, Indians may reject new ideas that are good in case they come from the “perceived” west. There are some other interesting effects as well.
In those cases where India has had to accept ideas from the west, it soothes itself from feeling inferior by claiming that those ideas were part of ancient India’s knowledge and thus are usable by Indians without any acknowledgement to the west.
The combination of high esteem for ancient Indian works, coupled with claims that they contain knowledge of the best in the west, leads many people to proclaim that those works have all the knowledge available in the world and therefore our task is only to figure out how to interpret them correctly. Thus a large section of students is led away from experiments and discovering new things.
The above idea (that all knowledge is codified in ancient Indian texts) of course bolsters pride among many Indians but also leads to complacency. It leads to the idea that whatever the west may do, we are better than them in any case – because we already have the knowledge that the west is yet to learn. So there is no need for hard work to gain knowledge (except that of interpreting the texts). Spiritualism is the ultimate example of a mechanism designed to support Indian ego. If the west is not spiritual and Indians are, then Indians are superior to the westerners. If something that can be called spiritual arises in the west, it will be inferior because Indian Spiritualism in much older than – so Indians still remain superior. And if westerners embrace Indian version of Spiritualism, Indians are still better because Spiritualism originated in their land. This is a no lose situation for Spiritualism.
Anyways, it looks like India is still having a lot of inferiority complex (especially versus the west) in its national psychology. This could lead to inappropriate knee-jerk reactions in rational discourse. Also it skews the understanding of the actions needed to make the lives of Indians better and leads to a lot of human effort being misdirected and wasted.
What should we do?
India is closing in on 65 years of independent existence. The generation that acutely felt the humiliation of foreign rule is dwindling. India’s population now is formed largely of the two generations born in free India. And the third is coming. It is now time for us Indians to shed any feeling of inferiority and the consequent biases that come with it.
We should focus now on making life better for all Indians. India is in the middle of a transition from being an agrarian society to becoming an industrial society. There are many challenges. Health and medical care still does not reach a large part of the population. Good education is hard to come by – even for people who are willing to spend for it. Female literacy is low and education even lower. India faces a water shortage problem; the way we are using water is not sustainable. India also faces a shortage of power generation capacity. For now we are ok as far as food production goes – but the balance of people to feed and food produced is not comfortable. A couple of drought years can leave us in dire straits. Other issues are housing, environmental protection and pollution, an inequitable growth benefitting few at the expense of others, disguised unemployment in agriculture etc. In short there is no dearth of challenges.
One important thing that is needed to face a challenge is honesty and openness. Holding onto notions that give us comfort and a glow of pride but do not help us in dealing with the present and future is not useful. An old Indian adage which is in the form of a shloka in Sanskrit goes: “Just as when a swan is presented with a mixture of milk and water, it drinks the milk and leaves the water behind, so human beings should imbibe the best out of the experiences and learning presented and leave the rest behind”. I think that we should follow the spirit of the above saying and get to work on improving lives of all Indians. Ideas should be evaluated for truthfulness in general and usefulness to the task at hand irrespective of where they came from.
So, you might ask, should we forget our culture and ape the west? No, not at all. We should study each and evaluate the individual ideas within them whether they are true and if they can help us improve our lives. There are ideas that are true and those which are not in each culture.
But, you may ask, suppose we undertake such a task and critically examine and find that some ideas in our ancient texts are not correct and reject them, are we not insulting our ancestors (the great sages) and by implication our culture? Again the answer is no. The greatness of the people who wrote the ancient texts remains intact whether or not today we find they ideas correct. They too were people just like us who were trying to gather and organize all available knowledge they had so that the knowledge could benefit their future generations – which includes us. They had the wisdom that such an endeavour will be immensely helpful to society and they took great pains to compile the knowledge. Their wisdom to see the best path forward at their time and unrelenting effort are the things that make them great. Even if some of their ideas are found to be incorrect today, that is because we now have better ways of detecting the truth. It does not insult their intellect or effort in any way. And therefore there is no question of insulting our culture at all. In fact we will be adding to our culture and make it stronger.
In summary, I think that we should give up our inferiority complex and fear and the clinging to a supposedly pure and untarnished idea of our culture. We should become bold and wise. We should fearlessly proceed in the pursuit of a better life for ourselves, the people of our country and the world by seeking ideas that are true and useful.
