The recent Shashi Tharoor’s speech at right time at right place hit
social media big way. It raised lot of debates and articles. I for one became a
fan of it and was swept by its revelations in the aftermath. Here it is for
reference.
One offshoot of that debate is also on India’s glorious past. And how
relevant it is for us today?
Did India Really have a glorious past?
India was a fascinating land. It was a dream land for the foreigners.
During Maurya, Kushana and Gupta period, it reached the
zenith of its glory. Post those periods it saw many ups and downs through many
invasions. But it still held its world leadership at least on the economics
& trade front till the Mughal’s period. The greatest decline for India is
obviously during British period. The greatest damage done by the British is to
impoverish the common man economically and intellectually.
Swami Vivekananda put it neatly – That Indian civilization developed
by the inner exploration and Greek civilization by exploring outer world.
During those bygone era of “Poorna Swarajya”, through inner
exploration, Indian’s produced some of the best theories from Artha Shastra to
Kama Shastra; from Natya Shastra to Vyakarana Shastra and many others. All of
these travelled across oceans and through land to Europeans. Some of the exotic
exports included motifs on Ivory, Sandalwood, Mehegony, Gold, Silver and many other
alloys. These depicted fascinating creatures which were unnatural to
foreigners. The lions, tigers, peacocks, elephants are some of the animals &
the pepal, banyan trees were magnificient flora to fathom for foreigners. The Indians
‘had and even now have’ so much to explore within India, within a locality. The
number of unique diverse species in a 100 Sq KM in Europe is equivalent to 100
Sq ft in Sahyadri ranges.
The famous spices travelled through the seas, attracting
westerners by its aroma. The art, literature like Panchatantra, Jataka tales travelled
through the Arabian lands to the western countries. Kavya, Meemamsa, Vedanta
flourished unhindered under the royal tutelage.
When it comes to science and mathematics, the Indians were
masters at it. They explored moon, sun, the planets, comets without sending
satellites. By inner exploration, through meditation itself they reached stars
and understood how they worked. When Aryabhatta was calculating earth’s
diameter using its shadow on Moon during Chandra Grahana (Lunar Eclipse), Europeans
didn’t have scientific temper to even ponder whether earth is round or flat.
One cannot ignore the contributions from Indians for the
basic Arithmetic, Algebra & Geometry. In the below interview Dr. Alok Kumar
gives glimpse of European thinkers giving due credit to Indian contributions in
their productions. http://aseema.net.in/ancient-sciences-and-voices-of-knowledge-an-interview-with-dr-alok-kumar/.
But the later day Imperialist Europeans and the famous educators, Macaulay
& Co., discarded it to suppress the Indian’s pride.
The advancement in metallurgy and Ayurveda are depicted by
live examples even today. Thanks to our freedom now, Ayurveda is being revived
in a big way now.
In every aspect, India fascinated the world. When the
Europeans being “outer explorers” mastered navy, they set out first to see India.
There was rush to reach India. Portugese set out. Spanish set out. Dutch did
not fall back. When they rocked something outside their land on ocean, they
called it India and its people as Indians. That’s how the Native Americans are now
called Indians!! :)
Why Then We Lost Intellectual Freedom?
We lost political freedom first. We lost it through treachery,
extreme cruelty. When we were making gun powder to blast rock to construct
forts and temples, Europeans invented canons by which they can use gun powder
to destruct the constructions. When they used that to even kill humans;
that was a cruelty the Indians had never heard or seen of. The British started their
military campaign by 1700’s and within few decades they were rulers for half of
India and subsequently got hold of entire India.
During the 1800’s there was debate by British on how best to
loot India keeping in view of the raising nationalism of Indians. The Sepoy
Mutiny they termed, they knew was not just a mutiny but a great upraising of
Nationalism. The various contingents across barracks were meeting for bhajans, dharmic
utsavs, chapatti utsav etc., and did this greatly coordinated upraising across
the country. This shook the British very much.
They had to at least corrupt the intellectuals, village
henchmen, royals to somehow rule them very well. They took away the economic
freedom through various measures of loot. They enforced cash crops production
only for export to England, destroyed handloom industry, etc.,
For intellectuals, they said government jobs are for those
who pass English schooling. They successfully killed Indigenous education which
was Inner exploratory, art, craft, language, dharma, Vedanta development. The
rajahs who were patronizing these were given diktat to stop it. They corrupted
the thinking of the average educated Indian, that what is important is material
success. And for that it is important to become good in accountancy, tax
collection. That’s it. Maths and English required for that is sufficient. No
more science, maths was encouraged beyond some basics.
They couldn’t tolerate Sir M Visweswaraya eligible to head
the public works department in Mumbai Government, they shunted him out. They
put so many hurdles for him to start Iron & Steel factory in Bhadravathi;
KRS dam would have remained dream but for his grit to take on their hegemony. Even
he was of the opinion in the end that we cannot self-rule ourselves. We need
dominion status. Thank god our political leaders fought for full freedom &
got it.
Should we revive our Intellectual Freedom? If So Why?
We ultimately became intellectual slaves. To this day we
continue teaching even our Independent sons and daughters, what British put in
text books during their hay day. The lies of Aryan Invasion theory, European
superiority in science, maths, engineering is still being taught. Everything we
read today is through the European view only. The science of destruction, the engineering
of fast exploitation of earth resources is considered as true development. Research
and development in aids, flu, cancer goes on forever with billions spent and
not really addressing the causes of it. The economics of stock trade, loan
based banking system, is considered as ultimate developmental formula. Almost every
Nobel awardee in economics is just a formula tweaker in some trading exchange. False
trading is true trading!! Did it solve poverty? Contrary.
But is there a better solution?
We must revive our Intellectual freedom. The solution is to
understand and accept firstly, that India had a glorious past. And not ignore or
discard it. And then delve deeper into that. Understand why was it glorious? What
was the education system? What was the Raja Dharma (Political system)? What was
the freedom at individual level? How was the Self-rule at grass root level? Were
these contributors for its glory?
The solution lies in taking our great ancient tradition and
marrying it to the present day technological advancement. Firstly we must bring
in education which teaches our children PRIDE in our culture, civilization,
tradition & heritage. Then automatically they’ll bring glory to India and
hence to the world.
May be the British designed our education to suppress India’s pride. Or May be they followed their pride in educating their children about their scientists and heroes. And since India was their colony, they passed the same heroes to us also. But since we are free now, should we not put our scientists and philosophers in our kids’ education? Would it be looked at as removal of Copernicus and introduction of Bhaskaracharya? Or would it be looked at just introduction of our scientists in our education? Did Europeans try to teach their kids whether Japanese or Indians found out early that Earth was round? Or did they just want to teach their kids who amongst their civilization found the first truth to raise pride of scientific temper in their kids?
We must recognize that we cannot isolate Science,
Mathematics from that of Sociology, Politics and ultimately Spirituality. All of
them are intertwined in the real sense. We must revive that thought process and
induct it into our system of education and administration. Then
we can claim back our world leadership without attacking other civilizations
but by spreading through peaceful means.
I think International Yoga Day is also one small step in that direction!! :)
