Where is India in the encounter of civilization?

By Rajiv malhotra

(Transcript)

Thank you very much for inviting me. It is honor to be here. And thank you very much for the invitation.

I did not have the honor of knowing or meeting Mr. Hegde personally. But Bharadwaj gave me some reading material which was very informative and very impressive. And in fact the rise of disruptive forces, which was already referenced, is an extremely important lecture he gave in 1992. It resonates with lot of my own works. How much I wish he were here as a collaborator! Because I am trying to take forward the same sort of ideas which he mentioned in 1992 and a lot of what I am going to talk about is where these disruptive forces are today.

It turns out that the disruptive forces have become stronger and more institutionalized and more organized but worst of all they have become internationalized and linked with global forces. So while he talks about Khalistan movement, North East movement, Dravidian movement and various other disruptive movements, in that era before the globalization, they were contained locally within certain space and there were no connections with forces outside of the country, global nexuses, which now exist. And that would be an important part of what I want to talk about.

“Disruptive forces” - Centrifugal forces

Some of my research interests, which I am presenting in this lecture, have to do with India’s centrifugal forces, which are what Hegde would call the disruptive forces. Centrifugal forces are as you know anything that tears the system apart. And these are both external and internal. Internal disruptive forces are today known as communalism and also socio-economic disparities of various kind. There is another dimension of centrifugal forces which are external. It is not just Pakistan stirring up disruptive forces in India; it is not just China linking up with Maoist forces in India; it is not just Baptist church in North America stirring up separatism in North Eastern India and Dravidian separatism in South India. It is all of these and more. So the centrifugal forces are more complex and globalized. But there are also centripetal forces which are opposite which bring the nation together - for instance, development of the corporate kind, infrastructure building, and national governance - these kinds of things. They bring the nation together.

Nation’s Sovereignty and the Role of Civilization

I am interested in what is the role of civilization in preserving a nation’s sovereignty. In other words, can a nation be sovereign very long if it does not have the cohesive shared civilization? Can a random collection of people continue to exist as a nation with all these centrifugal forces unless there is some cohesive sense of identity that can bring them together?

I am also interested in the role of Indian civilization as a positive force in the world. What are its contributions to the world? That is an important area of my work. And finally what are the prospects for India and what are the pre-requisites for India to harvest and harness these prospects.

A civilization briefly defined, as I am going to use it, is a shared identity or the collective images that we have of us as a people, a collective sense of history and shared destiny we have. It brings a deep psychological bond that makes citizens feel that the nation is worth defending. If this bond does not exist, then what is the “we” we are going to defend that we are going to make sacrifices for. So civilization is that which gives you the sense of ‘We’ - in a positive sense. Breaking the civilization is like breaking the spine of a person. If the social spine is broken then the nation is crippled and also behaves unpredictably.

Cynical attitudes in India

I come across cynical attitudes in India with this regard. For instance there are people who say that there is no such thing as Indian Civilization. It is a hatch-patch of many things put together and British gave us a nation. So there is a debate on whether India is five thousand years old or sixty years old and where you end up on that debate tells a lot about your views on Indian civilization. There are others who say that if there is a civilization it is a bad idea because it is responsible for all our problems. It is what makes us primitive, oppressive and so on. Then there are those who feel that civilization and identity, whatever they might have been, they are obsolete. Because what we have is a flat world like Thomas L. Friedman says and that you are an individual in today’s meritocracy and the concept of identity with groups does not matter. I disagree and I will explain later why.

There is another attitude that differences are a bad idea. Anything that makes you different is potential for trouble. Therefore differences are to be eliminated. I hear this quite a lot here. On the other hand one could say that differences are to be celebrated. That is a world view that Indians have. That is an ancient world view that says differences are inherent in nature. They are an inherent part of the fabric of reality of the Cosmos. Plants, animals, and seasons - everything has differences built in to them. Differences are built into the way human beings are composed - in their bodies and minds and their cultures and languages.

So difference can be celebrated. If you know how to celebrate difference which I see as the quintessential Indian contribution in civilization, then you do not have the problem which you have when you feel difference has to be eliminated. Because the moment you say difference has to be eliminated, well then how do you do that? Do you change to me, to my way, to eliminate difference? Or do I convert you to be like me so you do not have the anxiety over different? Do I genocide you because it bothers me because you are different so that I can get rid of you? Do I enslave you? All these are things that happen in the name of eradicating difference and to have one world. And we actually face more problems as opposed to learning how to live with difference and celebrate it.

Finally even discussing the topic of an encounter of civilization is often viewed with great suspicion. People think that there is some kind of a conspiracy theory going on or some kind of a negative thing going on and it would be better off if we talk about just how every thing is great and we are singing and dancing and doing Bangra together- kind of like a Bollywood ending. People often tell me to make sure to have a Bollywood ending in the talk. But I am not sure I would live up to that.

Escapism

There is also another prevailing attitude which I call escapism. Escapism is this very lofty and apathetic kind of approach moralizing which says things like “There is no other” “We believe in everything. All paths lead to the truth” “We survived for five thousand years and will survive no matter what.” “We have the truth and the mantras and the deities on our side” and “in any case it is all maya / mithya so why bother” But even great spiritualists like Sri Aurobindo wrote aggressively against this mindset as defeatist, other-worldly, world-negating mindset which is not what true spirituality is about. True spirituality is about engaging the world and dealing with the issues. Then there is another kind of escapism which accepts the problems but does not accept the responsibility and tends to see it as some one else’s problem like saying “USA will do this for us.” If not United States, then it is United Nations. It is like putting us for adoption and I keep saying an elephant is too big to be adopted. You cannot look into today’s world for a guardian parent. You have to look after your selves. That is the message of my today’s talk that looking at all the options, you have to come down and take responsibility in your own hands for India and its civilization.

“Disruptive forces – Fragments

I want you to recollect Hegde’s 1992 speech “The Rise of Disruptive forces”, in which he lists half a dozen, what he calls disruptive forces”. These forces I term as fragments. These are identities are sub nations within India that are having a hard time with rest of India. Hegde says that these groups for thousands of years did not have problem with each other or the nation and they were Ok. It was intervening too much into their internal affairs which have caused reaction from these groups and so they are becoming disruptive.

As this talk unfolds you will see how that I am actually picking that theme and see how it has developed over the last sixteen or seventeen years. We will see how these disruptive forces have become fragments and how these fragments have become global movements with India as sort of epicenter for the global movement.

Three Scenarios for India’s Future

I will present three scenarios for India taking into account the global civilizational encounter and India’s internal fragments that are in tension with each other. Scenario A is where I shall spend lot of my time. It is a negative scenario. And this has to be discussed and understood before we can move on. And that scenario says that India’s fragments

Scenario A is India’s fragments get taken over as parts of West, Pan-Islam and China; Scenario B Indian “culture” succeeds globally but Indian nation-state disappears. (India is not a nation but a culture); Scenario C India emerges as a thriving nation-state with its own civilization and helps the world.

I will present three scenarios of India’s future based on looking at global civilizational encounters and internal fragments that are at tension with each other. Scenario A is where I will spend more time. It is negative scenario and needs attention. It has to be discussed and understood before we can move on. And that scenario says that India’s fragments i.e. all these disruptive forces will be taken over as some parts will go to the West and some parts may belong to pan-Islamic expansion and some parts China may take over. So India may actually disintegrate or large parts of it may be taken over. And this I call fragmentation and disintegration of India scenario. And I will talk fair amount about this.

Secondly there are people who say India is not a nation but a culture. So why defend a nation? We are not a nation we are a grand new system. We are an idea. As long as the culture lives whether the nation lives is immaterial. I will discuss this scenario B as basically short lived. If scenario B happens and then soon scenario A happens. Soon India will not exist nor will its culture because once the nation is not there as the container, as the vehicle or the vessel which nurtures and protects and projects this culture, then the culture sort of scatters eaten up by various other civilizations. Soon it will also dissolve. It becomes parts of various other entities and loses its original self.

And then there is scenario C. It is a positive one which says that India emerges as a thriving nation-state with its own civilization and helps the world. Really A and C are the two scenarios. Scenario B is sort of a very graceful and dignified way of ending up in A. It is a way of saying “OK we loose with honor. We are finished but we won because our culture thrives.” It is like the deer saying, “So what if the tiger eats me up. In the belly of the tiger I will be alive and you know tiger runs fast and I will be running fast and I will be part of his DNA and I will nurture him and make him a loving creature from within.” But it does not work because after the deer has been eaten, the tiger remains a tiger. He is just a stronger tiger. So scenario B is kind of a delusionary kind of attitude that you hear very often particularly from very spiritual minded people who would say “What nation! What you want to defend? The culture is good. It is doing well. They eat our food and listen to our music and do our Yoga and wear our clothes and Bollywood movies they watch. So it does not matter whether there is India or not but as a culture we survive.”

Globalization and Civilizational Competition

Globalization intensifies the competition among the civilizations because there are some factors driving this competition such as the scarcity of world resources, growth of population, increasing expectations i.e. people everywhere in the world want to live this page-3 American life style though there are not enough resources. Soon there will be nine billion people by the middle of this century and there are just not enough resources to make such a life style possible for everyone.

Then there is the collective power of a group identity. Groups are coalescing. Rather than group identity going away, which in not happening, it is the opposite that is happening. Certainly if you know in India, the whole vote banks are intensifying i.e. group identities. So if it is happening in India why we should think it is not happening elsewhere? Hence on the global scale it is the same thing. What we call vote bank identity politics, is the same thing that is happening at the civilizational level where people feel that if they are able to negotiate and bargain using groups collectively, then they can get a better deal. So this intensified competition is not going away.

Top three civilizational competitors

The reality I feel is that the West, China and Pan-Islam, each publicly projects their claim of superior civilization and future domination of the world. And United States certainly feels that it is the leader and does not want to give up that claim. China certainly feels that by the middle of the century it can claim the number one position in the world in every respect. That is a claim it makes public and there is nothing to be embarrassed about it. And Islam has a doctrinal commitment to world domination. I realize that my term ‘West’ is not a simple term and that America is separate and Europe is separate. But I am going to use it as my thesis is already complex and I can put five civilizations or eight civilizations instead of three but that will not change the bottom-line as far as India is concerned. So I am using three. I also realize that Islam is complex and that there are many factions and many kinds of forces within Islam. But for my focus just calling it Islam suffices.

Now these top three civilizations have the following attributes. Each has collective super ego with common values and chauvinistic grand narrative of history (who we are? How our ancestor were great and glorifying ideas and stories about them) and each is committed to achieve global dominance. Each also actively nurtures its civilization and projects it via academics, education, media and policy. So that is not something on the fringes and it is very consciously done by each of these. This counteracts the Flat World individual meritocracy.

United States has got major projects about its sense of history, its founding fathers, its parades, its monuments; in Washington the presidential libraries and great flags everywhere - even outside a car dealership or outside a gas station - a sense of nation and patriotism that is larger than life. And this is not going away but it is getting stronger. All of this counteracts the idea of the flat world where one thinks “my merit counts” and so on.

Success factors for competing civilizations

Now here I have taken a grid. I have put the three civilizations I have been talking about in this study. And I am looking at what are the success factors. I already talked about historical identity and a sense of manifest destiny. But also modern institutions are important as a source of strength. This grid I use in workshops with westerners with Chinese people with Islamic and try to figure out their ideas of who is where on this grid.

Now modern institutions have three forms of capital: there is financial capital; there is political/military capital and there is intellectual capital. Now we have a Varna system which can also be seen as a form of capital. In fact, that is how I see it and not as caste or privilege of birth and all that. Varnas are forms of capital. Financial capital is Vaishya and Kshatriyas are political/military capital. So laws, courts, Supreme Court, international treaties, United Nations - not just military but all governance thus becomes Kshatriya capital. Nations and civilizations need that. Then there is intellectual capital - the knowledge, the know-how that is the Brahminical capital. So one could also say is that the job of the modern institutions in a civilization is to enhance its Vaishya capital, its Kshatriya capital and its Brahminical capital. This is a different perspective than the caste perspective.

China

Now if you look at China, they have a very explicitly stated plan and a mission to be the world leader by the middle of the century in economic, military and civilizational terms. They have constructed a grand narrative of China which is formulated and projected and it states about starting five thousand years ago in Confucianism and the great China story and how they became modern and how they are moving on to the future. This is a very seamless continuous story that they have constructed and this what they are teaching their people and projecting. They are doing a major promotion of Chinese positive history. Not that we are ashamed or we are guilty or we have abused people; we are sorry for ourselves; we shall apologize for our civilization – not that.

In fact a study of China in Harvard versus India in Harvard would be like night and day. If you look at what are the topics of public talk, the kind of courses they offer and dissertations on China and contrast that with India, which will show how China is projecting itself very positively while India is not. They have established Confucian study chairs, hundreds world wide and they have done it with the help of government and the private sector and entrepreneurs. China institutes are in San Francisco and New York and in many places.

Chinese insist that they have their own modernization which is not westernization. What they are telling is that they are telling their youths to modernize but that they have the Chinese approach to modernity. That does not mean you have to mimic the West. You modernize with all consumables and modern technology and all that but there is Chinese philosophical and civilizational ethos behind it.

While in India, we often hear whether we want to remain traditional or we want to become modern which means we want to become westernized which means we cannot be modern in Indian context, with Indian civilizational approach to modernity. That is considered an oxymoron in India but Chinese state that they have their own modernity.

Pan-Islam

Pan-Islam has a theological grand narrative from God. China does not claim that their grand narrative is from God but something they have built up over time but Islamic grand narrative comes from God which gives them identity, meaning and direction. They have a sacred geography – so the Kaba for example is sacred and you cannot point at Jamma Masjid to pray or any other particular place to pray. So the sacred geography is unique. There is a literalist account of history. Literalist means you cannot say it is metaphorical and we can reinterpret them for today. They are considered to be actual historic events so you cannot mess with it. Because when God is one of the protagonists in a historical event then you better not try to update what He might have said. You cannot amend it because God has spoken. It is literal history.

There is also preordained projectory into future. Not only the past is fixed but the future is also pre-ordained and you have to live in accordance to achieve that. So there is a scenario of “us” versus “them” – Dar-ul-Islam (us) versus Dar-ul-Harb (them). But Islam is not just one monolithic – just one doctrinal entity. There are cultural variations. There are at least four. There is the Arab version and then there is Persian which is very different – their language is different and their history and their links with Islam are very different. Then there is Indic or South Asian which is very eclectic and the most liberal of them all and probably very important asset for Indian civilization is to how to harmonize with this Islam because it is a highly exportable model. Rest of the world has to learn how to live with Islam and India has the longest experience of doing that. Now Indian Islam that is different than the rest hopefully can remain like that but it is taken over by Saudi Islam and forces like that.

Then there is a western version of Islam in Europe and States – people who are Islamic have a whole new political social value system. Finally there are fringe movements to liberalize but they are fringe movements. They do not have the center of power they are not able to stand with their own country and assert. Basically the reformation of Islam is at where the reformation of Christianity started. And once the reformation movement started in Europe it took two hundred years of fighting before the reformation could be firmly established and before the Church-State could be separated. Church has no longer Fatwa like powers which they used to have at one point. So Christian has a reference point to understand Islam as Islam is sort of pre-reformation Christianity, in terms of where it stands today.

Civilizational encounter between US and India

Now I am going to focus on United States to give you a worst case scenario of how a foreign civilization can come and intervene. I do not do this because I have a problem with United States. I have lived there. I love it and think that it is India’s best ally in terms of another civilization. But I do this because I think Indians must understand the propensity of America. America does not have just one point of view and there is no stable point of view – it keeps shifting just like in India where we have many points of view on a complex issue and the views shift over time. And the scenario I am going to develop also applies to Islam, China and other civilizations but I focus on United States because I have lived there for thirty forty years and I know it very well and I have studied its history for the last ten years in a very systematic manner and therefore I can talk with better confidence. But the similar things also apply to other civilizations.

Now USA also has some very positive things on India. Let us start with that. There is business success. I am also product of that business success of US. America’s gifts to India’s youths both for higher education and career opportunity are very well known. America has a love affair with Indian pop culture. That is also very encouraging and India is America’s friend after 9/11. These are some of the positive things you can list.

USA’s civilizational Threat Psychosis

However America’s outlook is far more complex and unstable and this is where I am going to develop the scenario. Now I am going to start by explaining that before we talk about India, America has its own problems both with China and Islam. America has a dual psychosis – civilizational threats it perceives from China and from Islam.

I start with the left hand side of the chart and then go to right hand side. In the left hand side there is a clash with China which I call the clash of modernities. It is a clash of modernities because China is saying we are going to compete on modernity. The competition is not based on religion or ideology but on modernity, industrial economy, military, political power, consumerism, materialism. So we are going to become more American than American. And this is eating America at the core of its modern Industrial complex society.

I call this a “Father-Son clash” because China’s industry has been sort of produced or exported by United States. It was US that sent capital to China from Nixon-Kissinger era. They sent the industries, the technology, the machines and they bought the finished goods. So United States actually transplanted its entire industrial complex and shifted it off to Pacific Ocean and China. So now the son that is China is saying “Thank you Dad. I learnt this from you. You gifted it to me. I have improved upon it. Now I can do better than you. And guess what. I am actually going to take you over. I am now better at this modernity than you are.” So there is a Father-Son clash over modernity going on. That is one of the two psychoses of United States.

The other psychosis which I have depicted in the right hand side is the clash of fundamentalisms. The Islam is not looking for modernity. They are not clashing because they have better machines; better factories and they export more consumer goods. They are not worried about that. They are competing against fundamentalist Christianity and its rival claims over historical prophets each having finality. Each, Christianity and Islam, is claiming that they have got the God’s franchise – in fact the exclusive franchise and the other franchise are bogus and hence not valid. And that they have the franchise to take over the world. So this fundamentalism versus fundamentalism between American Christianity and Islam is also a ‘Father-Son Clash’ in the sense that Islam is a offspring of the lineage of Judaeo-Christian prophets. So it is interesting that Islam as an offspring or sequel to Christianity is now taking on its own father. So it says “We respect Jesus and we respect the prior prophets and what they say is true and we should respect them. But our prophet is more recent and supersedes.” It is like a lawyer saying the contract you have is valid. But I have a more recent version. And the more recent version supersedes the older version. Not that your version is wrong but my version is better because it’s newer. This is also the son taking on the father on the father’s own terms.

Now you can see that United States has got here a problem because United States considers itself as consisting of Christian ethos and very modern enlightened secular ethos. Now both these are threatened by two offspring or two civilizations which ironically America has created and America has gifted them the tools in a metaphorical sense.

Challenged America hedging its bets on India

So how does this play into India? With the Chinese threat on one side and the Islamic threat on other side the challenged America has developed a schizophrenic attitude towards India which is what I will explain to you. So United States is hedging its bets on India. That is why it is impossible to characterize America one way or the other with respect to India on a long time basis.

I am going to go through the left hand side of the slide first which is the move to build up India and the right hand side of the slide says Fragment India - thus two opposing views on India. The build up India voices in American think tanks and American policy and so on are saying let us invest in India financial capital, market and labor; let us have military alliances let us have regional political alliances. And the benefit is that it will counter China’s hegemony, it contains Islamic threat; it is good for US corporate interests and India will be a stabilizing force in the third world. But there is also a caution at the bottom that says that if this happens and India is too successful then in the long term we have another China like threat. One China is bad enough what if another brilliant people became another kind of China and as successful in competing United States and then we will have to worry about two kinds of Chinas. So while there is a voice that says let us build up India there is also a voice that is concerned that it may get out of hand and become too strong. Therefore let us come to the right hand side that says let us fragment India.

The “Fragment India” is a much older voice than the “Build up India” voice. The “Build up” India is more of a corporate voice and political voice over the last ten years. But the fragmentation of India is a voice that has been there since the cold war. In the fifties and sixties United States has had this attitude that .let us divide and rule. They built up this Dravidian movement; Annadurai was built up and all kinds of movements were built up to fragment India and play one against the other. When Nehru was pro-Soviet then the United States used the Dravidian movement to counteract Nehru’s programme of unifying India. So the fragmentation of India is a very old policy. And it says exploit Dalits vs. the Brahmins; Dravidians vs. so-called Aryans; Women vs. Men Minorities vs. Hindus.

And the benefits to the proponents of this voice are that United States Avoids China like competition; You can still outsource and use those laborers; you can get a whole lot of cheap laborers in India but they will never get out of hand; they will never be too strong and they will never rebel against you. You can still use them on your terms and you can keep them weak. It will also accelerate evangelism because when the state is weak then the evangelists can have clear paths and there will be less resistance to what they are trying to do. and what a great market for weapons exporters. Imagine if the army of Gujarat wants to buy tanks and the army of Maharashtra wants to buy anti-tank missiles, what a great thing for the arms merchants! Their stocks will go up if there is a disruption in India. If the disruptive forces of Hegde would become civil war that would be good news for weapons exporters.

Now the United States is also very concerned if this fragmentation of India happens. It is good to talk about it but if it actually materializes then it is worst nightmare for United States to have anarchy or chaos in India. with India many times the size of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan it would be the worst nightmare for United States if there is fragmentation of India.

US Interventions in India

So I call this the Mother-in-law syndrome. Do I want the couple to be united and happy or do I want them to fall apart? If they are too united, they will not listen to me. I don’t have a voice. I do not have the power. So I have to go and meddle around and play one against the other and create some friction. But then if that gets to the point they would divorce and go apart , then again I am in trouble. So I kind of play between these two poles and do not want either pole to happen too much. So United States’ policy towards India keeps vacillating between these two poles of “Build up India” and “Fragment India” And you cannot expect a long term stability in the way.

I have also been studying for the past decade various US interventions in India. And this is a very significant chart. At the top is the United States - Academy, Government, Church, Funding agencies - how they work together and fund the money with US ideology in training, leadership training, all kinds of things to be done in India and India receives that through the academy, funding agencies, church subsidiaries, NGOs and so on. This is a kind of asymmetry because India does not do this up in the other direction.

Deconstructing India

And the way India is deconstructed, is shown here. This is how the “Fragment India” tank of the US looks at India: they look through both the secular lenses shown in the left and the Biblical lenses in the right and in between are the problems they study.

So the first building blocks to study are the castes, minorities and women. They keep showing that they have problems; they are oppressed and the civilization is bad. This feeds into a negative approach to Hinduism. And the negative approach to Hinduism feeds a negative approach to Indian civilization. Finally at the top there is a group of scholars who look at why India is not a valid nation-state; what is wrong with it and what are the human rights problems and other kinds of problems. So this is the kind of deconstruction of India template, if you will, which is quite commonly found in South Asian studies. By the way I have looked at the last thirty two years of conferences on South Asia which is held at Madison every year. I got all the proceedings and abstracts. They were surprised that somebody wanted to buy all of them. It portrays India as an anti-progressive country, frozen in time, poverty-causing like a patient with caste, Sati, dowry, feticide, untouchability etc with West as the doctor. Further India is mystical and the West is rational. Whenever I hear this very common statement in United States, I say “Look. The chances are that your doctor is Indian. He is not irrational or with some mystical background. And the chances are that the lot of technology you are using is Indian and it is not created by a bunch of mystical people but by pretty rational people. So why do you keep thinking that way? It is just one of the old stereotypes that have not gone away.”

Invasion Theory of India

Then there is this idea that everything good about India was imported into India. The so-called Aryans brought Sanskrit. The Greeks brought philosophy and rational thought; Hinduism was a colonial construction; Indian culture was started by the Mughals and British gave Indians a nation and cricket and now we have to import our human rights from America. So everything we need we should import. And I call this the invasion theory of India which means if we want something we should select who is the best invader who will give that to us. So we do not have any selfhood or we do not have any civilization we need to be invaded to have something of value. And this means that we are doomed to dependency also.

Afro-Dalit Project

Now what caught me started on this course of understanding America’s intervention with India’s break up was a very interesting meeting I had with a scholar in Princeton University. We were just sitting and having lunch and he has just come back from India and I said “What did you do in India?” And he said “Oh I went there as part of the Afro-Dalit project” So I asked him what is this Afro Dalit project. So he said, “Oh we go to India we do youth empowerment and training programmes” I said “It is very interesting. Can you tell me what it is? Who are the Dalits?” And he said “Well. … They are Africans. They are the blacks of India and the non-Dalits are the whites of India. And this is the black-white history of India which is mirroring the black white history of America. And the Afro-Dalit project is to educate our Dalit brothers.” This was amazing to me. And my whole thesis started when I started searching on Afro-Dalit project.

And there is a whole library of what they are up to and who funds them. And they are very much active in Tamil Nadu building up a whole network of youth empowerment and youth training to give them a contrary sense of history that they are historically a kind of oppressed people and non-religious and so on. The Church has a vested interest in it because if you can dislocate their identity from the rest of India then you can re-programme them and give them a new religion and so on. This is called Dalitstan project. So I was invited to this scholar’s office. And I saw this map. This is the map of the Dalitstan that was hanging there. On the northern part is Mughalstan which is from Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the way to Bangladesh. This turns out to be what Mullah Omar says when he states that he wants to put the flag of Taliban on the red fort of Delhi and recreate the Mughal Empire. And the southern part of India is Dalitstan and Dravidstan. So these guys are working on it. So I was very much amazed that nobody is talking about it. Nobody seems to have noticed. Yet these guys have an open project. If you just Google Afro-Dalit you will come across a lot of hits and you yourself can see that. Then I started getting deeper into it and found that there is merit in the thesis that says that the local minorities are being appropriated by global nexuses. Afro-Dalit Project is just one example.

“Disruptive Forces” – Frontier India

So Hegde’s “Disruptive forces” of 1992 have turned into Frontier India mindset where the following wild things are happening. Local minority is co-opted as a branch office of some Global Nexus; many minorities are apart of some global majority and are used for trans-national agendas; third world intellectual franchises are set up to deconstruct their own nation.

It is very interesting that America’s very own sense of nation is becoming stronger and stronger and also the nation of China, the nation of Russia and the nation of Japan are becoming stronger and they are not deconstructing. They are not going out of style. And the European Union is becoming a strong super nation. But somehow the intellectual fashion of the day that is being exported to Indian intellectuals and third world intellectuals is that please go back to your country and deconstruct yourselves. We have to ask them to first do that to themselves. Now you may say that there is a lot of post-modernism in American campuses and they are doing it to them also. But they are doing it from the fringes. The people who are doing it do not have clout. Nobody takes them seriously. The media does not quote these kind of people. They are not policy makers. They do not influence think-tanks. They just are cocoon in the academy and doing some deconstruction of America but the powers to be are very patriotic and the nation state is as strong as ever.

Minorities as part of Global Majorities

So this also led me to question the definition of minority. And I want to leave this provocation with you.

If you are at the Macdonald’s in Delhi and you have local establishment with twenty employees you would not say that this is a minority institution. You would say that it is part of global empire. It is part of a huge global multi-national. Some one may say that all these twenties are from minority classes in India. You will still not be convinced because as individuals working there may be minorities in their personal capacity. But the institution they are working for is a branch office of a large multinational and not a minority. Now why don’t you not apply the same thing to the Southern Baptist Church or Baptist Church which is a huge multinational which has set up a big network of churches in Nagaland and Tamil Nadu and they have a plan of twenty thousand churches in South India. So why do you call them minorities and not call them branch offices or subsidiaries of global multinationals? Why is it that if the product being sold is God’s love then all of a sudden the rules of the multinational do not apply? Because it is God’s love, God’s love is exempt from scrutiny and transparency.

I would submit to you that the definition of minority has to be modulated and if a minority is working for or funded by appointed by trained by a foreign global nexus, then it is not really a minority. It is part of a bigger enterprise. And that enterprise should be studied rather than these isolated twenty thirty people in a place whom we call minority. So I even provoke you to rethink the definition of minority itself in this age of globalization.

Positive India narrative

Now there is a new positive India narrative in the US Business schools. this is the response we like to hear. Finally India’s time has come because I have lived there for last thirty eight years and only in the last seven years this voice has started. Otherwise there is always there is only the kind of discourse that I have stated earlier. Now there is positive focus on investment, markets, labor force and all that. So what we have are two competing discourses. There is a positive discourse which says “Build up India” and this is primarily in business schools. So when my friends want to donate something for the study of India or South Asia, I always tell them to give it to the business schools and not to South Asian studies because South Asian studies are built on fragmentation of India -”Why India is a problem” kind of thesis built upon the old humanities or social sciences.

And now the irony is that both these views are also encased in India. In India also you have the technocrats, industrialists those kind of people who believe in a positive sense of India. Then you also have people in social sciences (and a lot of social science views are actually imported) in India who do not have faith in India as a nation. So you have both voices within India also.

Hypothetical situation for US intervention in India

Now I come to a more troubling part of my thesis.

I am going to give you hypothetical scenario for US intervention in India. Suppose South Asia becomes the epicenter of USA vs. Islam which can happen. Suppose the Taliban takes over nuclearized Pakistan. Ten years ago I wrote a paper on such a scenario but did not publish it because I thought it was sensational but today it is a possibility. What can happen is Taliban takes over ISI and ISI takes over the Pakistan army indirectly and we all know that Pakistan army runs Pakistan. So Pakistan could have a democratically elected government which can act as a nice front for PRO purposes but really they do not have the power and they do not call the shots. It is even worse than having Musharaff. Because at least there it was transparent as you were dealing with an army. But here Pakistan can fool one to think that they are dealing with some group of importance while really that group does not have any power. Let us say under such scenario Taliban takes over Pakistan and thus is now nuclearized Taliban. Now let us say US is fighting and years go on and the causalities build up and US faces economic pressures at home and another election is coming. So this fight turns into Obama’s Iraq. This fight with Talibanized nuclear Pakistan becomes Obama’s liability and US is desperate to exit but exit with honor.

So Obama or the future president has to figure out a way for exiting. So when the US exits, after having flared it up, then it has become a mess that somebody is going to encounter and guess who is going to bear that brunt of it? that will be India. I will also surmise in this hypothesis that Taliban will then have their vision of setting up that Mughalstan. They will see that they have enough disruptive forces sitting in India which can be incited by them and then they can get going with a huge revolution. Now that US has gone they can take over. Number Two. United States may also have another kind of intervention in India which is to safeguard Christians being persecuted. Some of you may think this is far fetched.

But when I started to research on this I saw a Wall street journal front page article two or three years ago titled US evangelists driving foreign policy intervention. It is a very long article that showed a hundred years history of evangelicals not only driving domestic policies like abortion and gay and nowadays on stem cell research very successfully but also very strong on foreign policy. And all foreign policy they want is that the United States should intervene wherever there is a pocket of Christians who consider themselves to be under threat. Once the United States agrees that that is the policy then they go and create some trouble and use that to bring United States intervention in there. Now the dossier of such cases of persecution of Christians in India is growing and it is a huge dossier in United States and there are regular hearings in Washington for which they invite those Indians who complain and there is a long line of such people who are granted Visa and travels grants to go and give testimony in the US congress. Also there are well organized networks in India which have been funded by these entities to provoke trouble, to monitor persecution and then go over to report and lobby in Washington. This is all over the US media. So United States may decide “Ok Taliban has got North India. We can go and intervene here and there and get some Christianized pockets in South India. We have built our own base there and we have built a network of support.” So this is the worst case scenario.

Now similar analysis also applies to Islam and China intervening, as each of them has stakes in India and ambitions in India. One can do scenarios like what if China and Pakistan jointly take military action. China would love to have Arunachal Pradesh because of the water -the Brahmaputra river water which can then be taken to Tibet. China would love to take Nepal because most of the water that comes to Ganga comes from Nepal and filters down to India. So this fight over water makes this geography very strategic and China would love to have all these. So you could build four scenarios of type A which shows how globalization brings civilizational threats to India.

What India can contribute to the world?

Now I shall go to part- II. Now I want you to set aside the disturbing scenario I have explained. Now let us see what is positive that India can offer to the world -how India could be a successful civilization and do positive things.

So to start with what are the problems the world faces where India can offer a solution? I will list just three. One is that development- the cycle of economic development is not sustainable or scalable. It is not ecologically possible to have development of such large number of people and achieve the per capita consumption of the western standard and also you cannot scale to the whole world. Then the Abrahamic civilizations are based on exclusivity and a mandate to take over the world and that is not going to sustain peaceful environment. Finally the human rights laws that exist protect the individual but not cultures. There is no law broken if the language is made extinct or if your culture or your rituals are gone. If you as an individual are not violated then the culture as an entity does not have a status. Only the individual has a status. So I will not go through this in detail because that will be a whole presentation by itself on what are some of the contributions that Indian civilization can make. There is a large reservoir of know-how of consciousness development, enhancement - what is called mind-sciences, intuition, creativity which is now at the cutting edge of western research in cognitive sciences, neuro-sciences, psychology and this is an asset that India has which is actually being acknowledged by the scientific community. So India brings a lot in this dimension.

There is a whole worked out system in Indian society on ecological sustainability starting with being content with less consumerism. The whole Ashrama model where you divide life into four stages has you as a consumerist in the second stage as householder (Gruhasth). But in the stages before and after that you learn life to be happy without much consumerism. These are social models which may be of application to world order where you cannot expect every body to live hundred years old and be a consumerist from zero to hundred at the American level.

Then there is the concept of groups that are de-centralized and self-organized without a state or a very centralized government or authoritarian government running the show. This is a very old Indian social organization that is highly de-centralized and the groups do not need some one else to give them laws and commandments as they are very well self-organized. There is the banyan tree metaphor which is sometimes used to describe this kind of society that is not one trunk or one system but lots of it together. And all of this results in pluralism, dignified aging and decentralized social security. In India we have dignified aging because you do not end up in old age home. But today because of modernity you do. Old age homes have been started here because of the tendency to westernize. But the tradition has a dignified aging. And there is kind of social security from one’s own community. Jaathi was social security network. But now we break families now and we break Jaathi structure and make it into caste. Now who is going to give you old age security? State does not have the money. Even in United States, the social security is going broke. So I do not think any country like India can provide such social security. So these are some ideas regarding Indian civilizational contribution.

Civilizational archetypes: Yogi vs. Gladiator

Now I want to introduce two archetypes. I call them the Yogi archetype and the Gladiator archetype. These are archetypes for civilizations. The Yogi archetype is illustrated by Emperor Asoka, who was a gladiator, a fierce warrior who surrenders to Yoga; In the case of Emperor Constantine the opposite happens. Constantine is a Gladiator who has a Jesus experience or Christ experience. But rather than surrendering his Gladiator nature and becoming a Yogi through the spirit of Christ he actually captures Christ and turns him into a weapon for imperialism. He takes the vision of the cross and he says in the cross he is wielding a sword for conquest. Next day he goes to the battle with this idea and wins and makes Christianity a weapon. So in the case of Roman appropriation of Christianity, the gladiator takes over Yoga, whereas in the case of Asoka, Gladiator surrenders to the Yoga. These are then the two different systems.

Yogi’s Dilemma

So at the base of this I have Yogi’s dilemma when facing the aggression of a Gladiator. So this is the question I ask those who are very spiritually inclined people. Imagine you are a Yogi and a Gladiator comes to you and says I am going to kill you and you cannot change his mind and you cannot run away. The question is what do you do? One option is that you do not fight and he kills you. That is one option you have. The second option is you become a Gladiator and fight him. You would beat him. But you are no longer a Yogi because now you become the Gladiator. You turn into a Gladiator and fight the Gladiator. So you are no longer the Yogi. So the dilemma is either way you are not a Yogi. So what do you do?

Indian civilization has to solve this dilemma. And we will see two ways. One is Mahatma Gandhi’s and the other is Bhagavat Gita: non-violent and violent. You remain the Yogi within but you fight the Gladiator. We will come to that. Let us keep this as an idea. So this is the dilemma that Indian Civilization - the Yogi’s Dilemma. Earlier I mentioned there is a scenario B that I will just quickly get rid of and then we will go to scenario C.

Scenario B is somebody saying Indian culture will win but the nation will be gone. And who cares. The nation is gone but we don’t care as the culture shall win. That is scenario B. So the Yogi lets the Gladiator take over. But he does this with a glorifying mindset saying that “I will be gone, I will be dead but the Yoga will win because the Gladiator is doing the Pranayama. Even though he is finishing me off the Yoga will live through the Gladiator” But in reality that does not happen. With Pranayama the Gladiator becomes a tougher Gladiator. For example they are using Yoga Nidra for US troops in Iraq, not to turn them into Yogis but better fighter. So scenario B is actually a graceful, dignified respectful way of ending up in Scenario A. Therefore I will dispose it off.

Now let us talk about Scenario C which is where I want to conclude my talk.

Scenario C is where Indian civilization survives; India survives as a nation and has something to offer to the world. Here there are two possibilities. One is that India solves the Yogi’s dilemma and the second is that India does not solve the Yogi’s dilemma and becomes a Gladiator in order to survive. In the first possibility India solves the Yogi’s dilemma through Gandhi’s Satyagraha as a model against the Gladiator and there is Gita’s war against the Gladiator. In both cases it is very difficult thing to do and the idea is there. But I am not sure if we as Indians are very for it because of the self discipline and sacrifice it takes is incredible. What it says is that be a Yogi inside and be very tough outside. So don’t let them walk over you and don’t let them take over you; you must fight them to win but do not turn that into hatred.

You carry out your Dharma in the Kurushetra and that means you have to fight. But you do not turn into their mindset and their mentality. This is a very difficult thing and this is not something I can discuss in two minutes. But this is a topic that is a very central theme for the survival of India as a civilization. The obstacles to this are, India lacks the hard power in terms for economics, governance, military, geopolitics etc. India also has a clash of soft power generally because its own discourse is colonized. The minute you talk about civilization they will ask “which civilization” and they will try to break you up into many camps to fight. Then there is the internal clash of nation vs. its fragments similar to a transplanted organ which is facing rejection by body’s immune system. When you have a transplanted organ the body’s immune system rejects it and you have to lower the immune system for internal harmony. So when you lower your immunity to create harmony inside you become vulnerable to infections from outside So it comes to saying do not have national security or defense in India, Don’t have anti-terror law in India because this will affect the harmony with minorities. But then you become vulnerable to external forces and threats. So this is the dilemma or rather internal clash that India faces.

And the final obstacle India faces is its loftiness, apathy of the world, other-worldliness etc, which we have seen before.

I have said three things. There is a global reality of three major civilizations at peace and war. And their competition will intensify for self-interest. We can wish otherwise but this is the reality. India is a major playground and battle ground for these global forces. The reality of India is that there is internal fragmentation which is worsening and the disruptive forces that Hegde talked about have worsened. These are supported by cycle of vote banks, quotas and bribes. Minorities are becoming branch offices for global nexuses and are receiving funding and ideological and political support. These are the centrifugal forces threatening India’s future. As far the future for India, I see that presently India lacks the civilizational Conesus and power necessary to survive as a nation-state in a dangerous world. India itself will disintegrate and its parts assimilated into others while India’s culture will flourish as their. Or if India’s civilizational foundation can be secured, then it could be a key solution provider to world problems.

Dr. M.S. Valiathan
38th Founder Memorial Lecture 2002
Shriram Institute For Industrial Research, Delhi

Medical Professional, Eminent surgeon, Biomedical expert, Dr. M.S. Valiathan, Chairperson Health Care- Technology Vision 2020 document preparation  team speaks on Ayurveda
*     New Stirrings
*     Origins
*     Ayurvedic literature
*     Roots of Ayurveda
*     Branches of the Ayurvedic tree
*     Basic concepts : tridosha as an example
*     Disease recognition and treatment
*     Training of a physician
*     Human destiny and an Ethical life
*     Ayurvedic leads for current research
*     Epilogue

Lala Shri Ram was a many splendoured personality. He built the Delhi Cloth Mills into a vast industrial empire covering a wide range of products and technologies. But he was an extra ordinary industrialist. Way back in the 1930s, he introduced revolutionary practices such as profit sharing with employees and worker participation in management. He founded or was closely associated with a number of educational and research institutions which continue to excel in the field of higher education – the Indraprastha College, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Lady Shri Ram College for Women and of course, the Shriram Institute for Industrial Research. He advocated universal free and compulsory primary education and technical and vocational education for women. His varied experience was drawn upon by the Government of India who appointed him to be the Chairman of a number of committees and institutions dealing with industry, finance, agriculture and planning. He was one of the authors of the famous Bombay Plan which anticipated the liberalisation of the Indian economy more than 50 years ago. He took keen interest in medical issues, especially tuberculosis. When we commemorate Lala Shri Ram, we are celebrating the flowering of the human spirit.

In speaking on India’s medical legacy as a tribute to Lala Shri Ram, I would confine myself to Ayurveda because of my lack of familiarity with folk medicine, siddha and unani which are equally Indian in inheritance.

* New Stirrings
Ayurveda resembles a deathless tree that continues to bring forth flowers and fruits from the oldest times of India’s history. Its influence on the diet and daily lives of millions of Indians often escapes notice but is nonetheless palpable. Hundreds of colleges and traditional centres impart instruction in the discipline which forms the backbone of India’s rural health care. Ayurvedic herbs have become the target of search in India and abroad for bioactive compounds, and the object of rival claims for intellectual property rights. Therapeutic centres of Ayurveda have sprung up in Europe and America where an increasingly chemicals – weary population turns towards natural products during illness. The National Institute of Health in the U.S. have opened a new Division which gives high place to Ayurveda in its investigative agenda. The pharmaceutical, cosmetic and even tourism industries parade the Ayurvedic provenance of their wares. All this and more bear testimony to the vitality of a system which had flourished even when the Buddha was ministering to the people in India.

* Origins
According to the Charaka Samhita, the outbreak of diseases and people’s suffering were the theme of a conference of noted sages long ago in a Himalayan valley. The participants agreed that the remedy for the ills lay in Ayurvedic lore which had to be procured from Indra who had himself obtained it from Brahma. Bharadwaja volunteered for the mission to Indra, which succeeded and brought Ayurveda within human reach. Sushruta, Kashyapa, Bhela and other Samhitas narrate a similar event with variations here and there. Regardless of variations, the event highlighted compassion as the mainspring of Ayurvedic endeavour.

Charaka remarked that there was never a time when life and intelligent people did not exist. People knew about life, and all around them grew herbs in plenty. Ayurveda emerged from the substratum of interactive people and their verdant surroundings – it did not appear all on a sudden out of nothing. Charaka would say that there were always people who understood the science of life in their own way, and it was only with reference to its first systematic understanding or formulation that it could be said to have had a beginning. The ancient Tantras and Samhitas of Ayurveda marked that beginning.

* Ayurvedic literature
The foundational texts of Ayurveda are the Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas which follow the medical and surgical traditions of Atreya and Dhanwantari. The versions we have today are by no means the original texts which underwent many revisions and redactions over centuries. Charaka who lived in the 1st century CE and was reportedly the physician – companion of Kanishka states explicitly that he was no more than revising the tantra of Agnivesa which had been in existence for centuries and was available to Chakrapani Datta as late as the tenth century CE. The later chapters of the Chikitsa sthana and the entire Kalpa and Siddhi sthanas of the Charaka Samhita were however lost in course of time, and their restoration and further revision were accomplished by Dridhbala of Kashmir in the 8th century. The Charaka Samhita of today is Dridhbala’s text. Sushruta Samhita had a similar textual evolution. What was composed by ‘Vridha Sushruta’ in the sixth or seventh century B.C. underwent by Nagarjuna in the fourth century AD and became another rmajor landmark in Ayurvedic literature which abounded in commentaries of the ancient texts. Ashtanga Samgraha of Vagbhata the first and Madhava Nidana appeared in 6th or 7th century AD and followed the trail of Charaka and Sushruta. Madhava’s approach was original in so far as his entire volume was devoted to the diagnostic process in medicine. Ashtanga hridaya of Vagbhata the second – the popular favourite of Kerala – followed in the eighth or ninth century and became a model of lucidity and poetry in the presentation of Ayurvedic subjects. Sarangadhara Samhita which laid special emphasis on plants and ecology made its appearance in the fourteenth, and Bhava Prakasa which referred for the first time to syphilis and its treatment with mercury in the sixteenth century. Each of these major works stood out by the presentation of new information or approach or emphasis, and seemed to respond to the call of Vagbhata to update knowledge in tune with changing times. There are literally thousands of other Sanskrit texts on Ayurveda not to speak of a vast literature on the use of alchemy for medical purposes. As Charaka refers to many texts which existed in his times Ayurveda never seems to have suffered from the paucity of textual material.

* Roots of Ayurveda
Charaka urged the votaries of Ayurveda to be loyal to the Atharva Veda. The Atharva Veda consists of six thousand mantras and one thousand proselines, a major percentage of which deal with health, disease, and long life. These themes run as an unbroken thread from the Atharva Veda to the Samhita literature of Ayurveda.

The Atharva Vedic mantras attributed diseases such as fever, leprosy, epilepsy and jaundice to supernatural causes and prescribed ritual measures which were promotive (paushtika), curative (bheshaja), or destructive of the enemy (ghora). The chanting of mantras was obligatory at the rituals which included oblation (homa), purification (prayaschita), and the application of amulets. An Atharvan mantra claimed that hundreds of physicians and thousands of herbs could not achieve the results obtained by an amulet. Indeed guggulu, satawari, kushta and many other herbs that were used in healing were believed to work through supernatural, and not pharmacological action. The Atharva Vedic approach to therapy was diavavypasraya which assigned the causation and management of diseases to the domain of faith, miracle and rituals. But Atharva Veda had much else besides. Its enumeration and description of bones; or organs such as heart, lungs, gall blader, kidneys, liver, spleen, intestines, rectum, marrow, blood vessels and placenta; of the flow of liquid elements in the body; of the operation of air currents (prana, apana, vyana and samana); of the use of a reed as a urethral catheter to release retained urine and many other references became the forerunner of the more elaborate and more rational (yukti vyapasraya) system of medicine that appeared in the Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas. Dasgupta believes that the Atharva vedic concept of diseases being produced by wind, water and fire was the seed of the tridosha doctrine of Ayurveda.

The roots of Ayurveda go beyond the soil of Atharva Veda and draw upon the later domains of Indian philosophical systems. The philosophical concepts however, evolved and changed in their Ayurvedic incarnation even as the faith – ritual based medicine of Atharva Veda became rooted in empiricism and reason in Ayurveda. To illustrate, Vaiseshika, to which Ayurveda was much indebted, categorised substances (dravyas) as the five elements, manas, time, space and self – a classification which Charaka adopted. The position however changed in relation to properties or gunas which inhered in the substances. Charaka stipulated, and applied in practice, physico-chemical properties such as heaviness and lightness which were not mentioned in Vaiseshika. From the series of non-physico chemical properties beginning with para, apara etc. in Vaiseshika, several were left out by Charaka who also gave different meanings to terms such as para and apara to fit the tradition of medicine. Again, unlike the Vaiseshika, Charaka included phychological properties such as desire (ichha) and hatred (dwesha) in the non-physico-chemical list.

Ayurveda adopted the Nyaya classification of the means of knowledge as the testimony of the wise (aptopadesa), perception (pratyaksha), inference (aumana) and reason (yukti). The definitions of logical terms and the classifications of philosophical disputation as tarka, vada, jalpa and vitanda were so fully and so authoritatively discussed in the Charaka Samhita that some scholars are persuaded that Nyaya Sutras had their origin in the elaborate logical formulations of Charaka! Ayurveda however parted company from Vaiseshika and Nyaya and adopted the Samkhya concept in relation to the subtle body (Ativahika Sarira). This view held that the subtle body composed of air, fire, water and earth in association with manas and soul, entered the womb by the power of karma and combined with semen and menstrual blood to form a fetus. Nyaya and vaiseshika had denied the existence of a subtle body. The Ayurvedic sages were like master craftsmen who took and shaped stones from different philosophic quarries to build a new edifice for the practice of medicine.

* Branches of the Ayurvedic tree
The tree was nameless with few branches in the Upanishadic times. The Chandogya Upanishad, among the various subjects for study, mentioned bhuta vidya and sarpa vidya but no other medical topics. The tree however ramified as illness and people multiplied and the healer’s profession grew in experience. By the time of the Charaka and Sushruta Samhita, Ayurveda had developed eight branches which were well differentiated as follows:
*     Surgery (Salya)
*     Treatment of the diseases of head (Salakya)
*     Treatment of the diseases of the body (Kaya chikitsa)
*     Treatment of children (kaumarabhritya)
*     Treatment of the effects of evil spirits (Bhutavidya)
*     Treatment of poisoning (Agada tantra)
*     Rejuvenation (Rasayana)
*     Enhancement of virility (Vajeekarana)

Specialisation was much in vogue and was obviously encouraged. Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas laid respective stress on medicine and surgery while Kashyapa Samhita highlighted the treatment of women’s and children’s ailments. Charaka recommended that patients, in certain conditions, should be referred to the experts in Salya. Physicians and schools became famous for their expertise in surgery and in the treatment of eye disease, mental illness, poisoning and women’s ailments. Numerous texts were written on each of these subjects and a student was left free to choose whatever did appeal to him for his career.

It is obvious that physicians and schools often differed in their views and approaches. Sushruta explicitly differed from the ‘followers of the Vedic School’ in enumerating and describing the bones of the body. Charaka mentioned the medical and surgical approaches to the treatment of piles only to recommend the medical alternative in view of the complications of surgical measures. The elaborate institution of Ayurvedic debates served as the academic forum for the presentation of themes and ideas and their trial through the fire of discussion which was not necessarily friendly. An entire chapter in the Charaka Samhita on the format, guidelines, method and end points of discussions makes it abundantly clear that scientific debate was the principal and vibrant mechanism for instruction and for interdisciplinary dialogue. Charaka held that such discussions enhanced the power of expression, removed doubts, reinforced conviction and added to one’s fame. New things could also be gleaned during the discussions in the assembly (Parishat).

* Basic concepts : tridosha as an example
Ayurveda is based on certain basic doctrines of which tridosha takes pride of place. However the popular notion that human pathophysiology is a manifestation of wind, bile and phlegm is an absurd caricature of the tridosha doctrine.

Body depletes and decays daily, and receives replenishments through food. The articles of food undergo digestion and give rise to two species of products – prasadas and malas. The prasada fraction goes on to build the seven dhatus of the body even though their exact pathway – whether sequential or simultaneous is unclear. The mala fraction includes tridoshas – vata, pitta and kapha – as well as kittas or excrements such as sweat and ear dirt. Both prasada and mala are important and their presence in the right proportion in the body is indispensable for health and well being. In the body economy, malas rank in importance with the seven dhatus and are themselves designated as mala dhatus. They become troublesome only when their right proportion is disturbed. Vagbhata, in fact, regarded the equilibrium of doshas – not only of dhatus – as the basis of good health. Equilibrium requires that the doshas are in the right proportion with reference to themselves as well as to the rest of the dhatus of the body. When they become deficient or excessive they are said to be perturbed, and perturbation (Doshavaishamya) denotes varied ailments. In Vagbhata’s language “as the waves, billows, and foam are, in reality, the same as the ocean, so are all the different diseases nothing but the three doshas in perturbed states”.

The three doshas are however not the exclusive products of food processing in the body. They have another source in the incessant operations of the dhatus of the body. Thanks to the operations, dhatus such as flesh, blood and bone give rise to dhatumalas as bye products which also contribute to the formation of the three doshas. No matter what their origin – food or dhatus – the three doshas have preferential locations in the body. Vata belongs to the lower abdomen, pitta to the middle of the body and kapha to the chest and head. Preference does not imply exclusiveness any more than the preferential location of blood in the heart and vessels rules out its presence elsewhere in the body.

The functions of the three doshas are indicated by their very names according to Sushruta. Vata is derived from ‘Va’ which signifies movement; pitta from ‘Tap’ which means heating; and kapha from ‘kena phalati’ or amassing with water. In other words, the three doshas encompass three categories of functions – movement, heating or processing and building or amassing. These functions would cover everything a person does – conscious or unconscious, physical or mental. No wonder the equilibrium of the doshas was regarded as the condition of well being. Given the philosophic bent of the Indian mind, attempts were even made to find a parallel for doshasamya in the equilibrium of the three gunas – sattva, rajas and tamas – in the cosmos.

Of the three doshas, vata is dominant with the power to move, and the capacity of a tornado to destroy, everything. The disturbance of vata accounts for eighty disorders, that of pitta forty, and that of kapha twenty. The primary disorders have numerous subdivisions but an experienced physician could detect the characteristics of a disturbed dosha in each manifestation of a disease. This is the crux of the diagnostic process which involves careful listening to the messenger, patient and relations; using the five senses in examining the patient and his surroundings, and reflecting on what might have gone wrong. According to Charaka, a physician who fails to enter the dark interior of the sick body with the lamp of wisdom and reason can hardly hope to treat a patient. The three doshas affect the body as much as the mind because body and mind are a duo which are nothing without each other. However the effects of doshas are controlled by ones Karma in the ultimate analysis.

Tridosha is by no means the only basic concept in Ayurveda. There are others no less important such as the panchabhuta doctrine. But one cannot compress them into a single lecture.

* Disease recognition and treatment
Ayurveda laid great stress on determining the causation of disease (Nidana) before initiating treatment. The means of knowledge – perception by all senses, inference, reason and testimony of great physicians – were fully harnessed in recognising the cause and stage of a disease, but the primary intellectual instrument of the physician was inference. If the exposure to cold or rain is known to be followed by fever or indigestion in a patient should suggest the possible cause of the patient’s clinical state. The cause need not always be inferred from preceding events : It could as well be sported from a concomitant phenomenon like rigor. Over and above these types of inference, a physician could try an experiment based on the dictum that similar things produce similar effects or accumulation, while opposite things produce opposite effects or dispersal. Thus he could infer the cause of a fever as cold if the application of heat decreased it: or as a position if an antidote countered it. In any event a physician had to be proficient in the use of inductive methods to become a good diagnostician.

In the Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas the treatment of illness was based on reason (yuktivyapasraya). Resorting to oblations or amulets was not condemned but was seldom recommended in the mainstream of therapy. Daivavypasraya had silently yielded place to yuktivypasraya, and the old order had changed. The aim of treatment was no longer the propitiation of Varuna or Indra but the restoration of the equilibrium of doshas, which was achieved by administering substance including diet and medications with properties opposed to those of the disturbed dosha. Physical measures such as activity were prescribed on the same basis. Thus cold was treated with hot, hot with cold, acid with alkali and so on. The Ayurvedic properties of smanya (commonality) and visesha (particularity) laid down that substances would accumulate by the exposure to another substance with similar properties whereas it would deplete if the mixing substance had dissimilar properties. This was in fact the cornerstone in the choice of substances and physical measures for treatment. Afterall, diet and medications are composed as much of five elements – panchmahabhutas – as the human body and they would bring about increase or decrease of doshas thanks to their similar or dissimilar properties. These properties were taste (rasa), potency (virya), vipaka (taste following digestion) and specific effective action (prabhava) which were not fixed but varied from substance to substance, from time to time and from place to place. A substance could have different effects at different times of the year, in different places in the country or for that matter, different parts in the body. Just as the properties of a fruit would change with time and location so would those of the human body on both counts. A good physician had to be alert to all these possibilities. He had at his command an abundant formulary which included hundreds of medicinal plants, meats, wines and varied products of vegetable, animal and mineral origin. Instructions were no less elaborate on their preparation as decoction, paste, pills, powders and so on. Apart from the administration of the proper diet and medications, treatment involved physical measures such as lightening, building, lubrication, sweating, emesis, purgation, head purging and blood letting. Mild disturbance of doshas could be settled by simple measures (Samana) whereas serious perturbations would call for no less than the elimination of the perturbed doshas (Sodhana). The physician was obliged to follow detailed stipulations in implementing each of the procedures.

The other domain of treatment was surgery which was regarded by Sushruta as the most ancient and most efficacious of the eight branches of Ayurveda. Even though cauterisation, the application of a reed to release retained urine and some other procedures had figured in the Atharva Veda, surgery crystallised as a well defined discipline at the time of Sushruta. He classified surgical procedures into eight distinct types such as incision (chhedya), excision (bhedya), scraping (lekhya) etc. and recognised three phases in surgical treatment – pre (poorva karma), intra (pradhanakarma) and post operative (paschatkarma). He described a series of techniques such as abscess drainage, repair of nose and ear, removal of bladder stone, removal of dead foetus and many others. He discussed the management of fractures and dislocations in great detail with emphasis on manipulation (Anchhana), pressure (pidana), immobilisation ((Sankshepa) and bandaging (bandhana) and gave special instructions on treating fractures of the hip, neck etc. He described one hundred and one blunt instruments (yantras) and twenty sharp instruments (sastras) and commented on their fabrication and quality assessment. Apart from these highly technical sections, Sushruta also discussed anatomy, basic concepts, professional ethics and all else that an accomplished surgeon had to know. How the surgical heritage of Sushruta faded and managed to survive in the hands of hereditary practitioners in India is another story.

* Training of a physician
It would appear that two modes existed in ancient India for the training of physicians. The Gurukula system flourished, and the echoes of the Guru-Sishya discussions resound through the pages of the Charaka Samhita. The qualifications prescribed for the guru were no less stringent than those for the pupil, and involved tough requirements in terms of physical, intellectual and mental abilities. The training commenced following a ritual initiation which signaled a sacred contract between the teacher and the pupil. The ceremony was witnessed by fire, other teachers and students. The following extract from the admonition of the teacher to the pupil during the ceremony gives us a flavour of the training process.

“You should be a celibate, speak truth, abstain from meat and carry no weapons. You should never disobey me, except when it incurs the wrath of the king or involves the possible loss of life or great unrighteousness. You should surrender to me and live with me as my son, servant and suppliant. You should collect things sought by me and move about with my permission: when trained as a physician you should think of the welfare of all living beings and provide care to the patients by every means. You should not think ill of patients even at the cost of your life, covet other’s women or property. Your words should be measured, sweet and truthful. You should shun the company of the wicked and traitors, and decline to accept food offered by women except in the presence of their husbands or guardians. While entering a patient’s house, you should take a person known to the family with you, and never disclose what you see or hear outside the house. You should not bast even when you have learnt much…..”

The training was both theoretical and practical because a person trained in one aspect of medicine alone, Shshruta noted, was handicapped like a one-winged bird. Theoretical training was carried out largely through discussions (Sambhasha) among the pupils with the teacher in the chair. Charaka Samhita is, in fact, a compilation of many such discussions under Atreya’s supervision, with the chapters and discussions probably representing the disclosures of Atreya. The discussions were vigorous and provided opportunities for serious debate and consensus development. Practical training involved domiciliary visits, attendance on patients, identification of plants, preparation of medications and above all, the inculcation of the high values that ennobled Ayurveda. For the surgical aspirant, Sushruta described a whole series of experimental procedures in plants, trees, fruits, dead animals, cadaver etc., that stimulated incision, excision, suturing, tapping, etc. On the completion of training the candidate was obliged to obtain royal permission for starting independent practice.

Side by side with the Gurukula system, the training of physicians excelled in the universities. Takshasila was noted as a foremost centre of medical education in the Buddhist annals which recount the fascinating story of the training of Jivaka-Buddha’s physician – in that university. Students were enrolled at 15 or 16 years provided they passed a critical examination by the dwara pandithas of the univeristy. The residential training covered the theory and practice of medicine as well as related sciences. We read about the ‘salaka’ and other tests including practical ones at the time of the student’s graduation after six or more years, when he was required to discuss a given topic before a learned assembly. Takshasila was not alone in imparting medical instruction – Nalanda was not far behind.

* Human destiny and an Ethical life
The Yoga Vasistha insisted that our fate is in our hands and all our experiences could be controlled by a determined effort of the human will. This view or Paurusheya claimed that human will was all-powerful, and fate could be overcome. At the other end of the specturm, several schools held that fate (daiva) controlled our actions and human destiny was no more than its plaything. Charaka took an intermediate view which was novel in Indian philosophy. According to him, while the effects of acts of enormous wickedness could not be prevented by good conduct, those of all others could be countered or modified by conscious action based on good conduct. An illness which resulted from one’s improper Karma could be prevented or cured by non-moral actions such as proper health care. One could not contend that relief from illness under those circumstances had nothing to do with health care, and that it was a consequence of one’s past good deeds. If the effort of the patient and the physician could achieve nothing and the entire course of life was predestined, the endeavour of Ayurveda would lose purpose and significance. It was reasonable to claim that ‘fate’ came into play only when one’s best efforts failed to arrest the consequences of abominable actions. Vagbhata too echoed the Ayurvedic belief in the possibility of the triumph of human action over fate.

The motivations of all human actions are the desire for long life, the desire for wealth and the desire for the future life. In adopting this clear-cut view, Charaka differed from the traditional systems of Indian philosophy. The Vaiseshika looked upon the attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain as the motivations for human action; Nyaya went beyond attraction and aversion and traced their mutual source to delusion (moha); yoga of Patanjali held that virtuous actions arose from the tendency towards emancipation and sinful actions from ignorance and egoism; Advaita Vedanta insisted that all actions arose from ignorance (avidya). Charaka departed from all these views which identified false knowledge as the cause of all our troubles and upheld the realisation of the higher truth as the ultimate answer to the pain of existence. He urged that evil and suffering arose through our errors in judgement and imprudent conduct (Prajnaparadha) which had no philosophical significance. It was entirely within our non philosophic capability to give up errors and adopt virtuous conduct (Sadvritta). Ayurveda – the science of life – was always more than medicine and spoke of life which is good (hita) or bad (ahita), happy (sukha) or unhappy (dukha). A good and happy life is nothing without good health, but it is far more: it demands prudent and virtuous conduct that is conducive to the good of the individual, his surroundings and the society of which he is a part.

* Ayurvedic leads for current research
For a long period, efforts were made to identify therapeutic compounds from Indian medicinal plants which number over a thousand in Charaka Samhita alone. Hundreds of papers were published but, other than the products from Rawolfia serpentina and Commiphora mukul, no drug of importance emerged from the work that spanned fifty years. Even serpasil and guggulip could not claim to have had a global impact. The unfocused work on drugs from medicinal plants received a jolt from two western events in the recent past. The thalidomide tragedy changed the attitude of people in Europe who became averse to the use of chemically derived drugs and demanded natural products. Secondly, MNCs who led the R&D programmes for drugs at the cost of millions of dollars took note of the chemophobia in Europe and agonised over the huge damages awarded in class action suits against the adverse effects of chemically derived drugs. As a result they turned their attention to medicinal plants which had been used for thousands of years in folk medicine and the traditional system of medicine in India, China, Africa and South America. In the mean time, advances in organic chemistry and molecular biology, the advent of new technologies such as rapid through put screens boosted the developmental process of drugs from plants. Though late, India has woken up to this reality and begun to put her act together for identifying compounds from Ayurvedic plants and transferring them for production as a collaborative effort of modern laboratories, centres of traditional knowledge and drug companies. The stakes are high and the promise vast in this joint endeavour. Drugs of Ayurvedic provenance against malaria, tuberculosis, cancer, diabetes and for ageing related disorders are likely to emerge from the ongoing efforts as these conditions were recognised and treated with herbal remedies in the Ayurvedic tradition.

The pragmatic approach to drugs apart, Ayurveda throws up a host of interesting questions for the investigator. What was the disease pattern in ancient India? Was it similar to the present profile of diseases? Would it be possible to draw a picture of the epidemiologic scene of long ago from the number of references in ancient texts in view of the ease of computing the references from digitized texts? Might the status of diseases in the remote past and their current statistics give us clues to the natural history of diseases?

At the experimental level, what are doshas which constitute the central doctrine on which diagnosis and treatment are based in Ayurveda? Charaka says in no uncertain terms that doshas are substances. As they have never been chemically identified, there have been suggestions to regard them as concepts. This may be a mistake and giving up on an ancient doctrine too soon. Plant formulations which oppose the properties of the three doshas are well known and used regularly for Ayurvedic treatment. If the plants with properties opposed to each dosha could be characterised in terms of biological activity – antimitotic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, immuno-modulatory etc., and they showed characteristics fingerprints, the first step in identifying the doshas might have been taken. These are merely examples of the kind of exciting work which calls out to be done in what could be called Ayurvedic nosology and biology.

* Epilogue
Ayurveda is a jewel in the crown of India’s cultural and scientific legacy. It has a continuous tradition reaching back to the Atharva Veda which talked of hundreds of vaidyas. It was an integral part of education in ancient India where the daily lives of people and the treatment of the sick and wounded were governed by its concepts and methods. It flourished during the time of the Buddha who was not only treated by Jivaka but was himself no ordinary physician – the apurvavaidya so revered by Vagbhata in the memorable invocation of Ashtanga Hridaya. The Arabic, Tibetan and Chinese translations of the Charaka, Sushruta and Vagbhata Samhitas exerted no little influence in distant lands as early as the first half of the first millennium. Navanitaka – the famous manuscript discovered by Col. Bower in the nineteenth century – established beyond doubt that Ayurveda was much in vogue in Central Asia in the early years of the Christian era.

For the high water mark of the Buddhist and early period up to the time of Vagbhata in the 9th century, Ayurveda declined and stagnated over subsequent centuries. The decline is undeniable because Sushruta’s surgery virtually disappeared during this long period when one no longer encounters Charakas or Vagbhatas. May be ancient science could not remain at the peak forever any more than music could stay on the high note throughout a long performance. The reasons for the long stagnation of Indian science including Ayurveda from the ninth century are yet to be determined. To make matters worse, unlike other sciences Ayurveda received no support or encouragement from the Government during the colonial rule.

The ancient tree has however received much-needed nourishment in free India. New sprouts have appeared and inspired hopes of a rich harvest. As the concepts of a healthful diet and life style, herbal therapy and techniques such as panchakarma from the Ayurvedic tradition take on new forms in the practice and formularly of modern medicine we may be witnessing the most far reaching contribution that Ayurveda would make to the progress of medicine in the world. The emerging dimensions of the East-West encounter in medicine would please Charaka who regarded the entire world as the teacher for a wise physician.

* Biodata of Prof. Dr.M.S. Valiathan

A 1956 Medical Graduate of the Kerala University, Dr. Valiathan received his surgical training in London and the University of Liverpool Hospitals in U.K. and obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons and Master of Surgery degree from Liverpool. Subsequently he specialised in cardiac surgery at the Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities in the U.S. and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada in Cardiovascular and thoracic surgery.

Dr. Valiathan has served on the surgical faculties of the Georgetown Medical School, Washington DC and Post graduate Medical Institute, Chandigarh. He was a visiting professor in biomedical engineering at the IIT, Madras before moving to the Chitra Tirunal Institute, Trivandrum where he remained Professor of Cardiac surgery and Director for 20 years. It was under his leadership that the Institute developed and commercialised a series of devices such as a prosthetic heart valve and blood bag and became an Institute of National Importance by an act of Parliament. Dr. Valiathan’s monograph and over 90 scientific papers relate to cardiac surgery, a heart muscle disease of the tropics and cardiovascular technology.

Following the long tenure in Trivandrum, Dr. Valiathan served as Vice-Chancellor of the new University in Manipal. At the end of his 5 years’ tenure, he was awarded the Homi Bhabha Senior Fellowship which gave him the opportunity to Study the Charaka Samhita in the original. His book on the Legacy of Charaka is expected to be published later this year.

Dr. Valiathan is a recipient of many honours, honorary degrees and Awards from learned societies, academies, universities and professional associations in India, U.K., France and the U.S.A. He is a Padmabhushan awardee and currently the President of the Indian National Science Academy and Chief Scientific Advisor the Government of Kerala.

For further information, please contact: Dr. M.S. Valiathan, Honorary Adviser, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Madhav Nagar, Manipal - 576 119,

By Deepak Dasgupta

The patriots took inspiration from Gita, followed the path shown by the Lord and plunged in to the freedom movement and vowed to free the Dharti Mata from the chain of sufferings.

Recently a controversy has arisen out of a judgement given by the Allahabad High Court judge, justice S.N. Srivastava while giving a verdict on a writ petition filed on behalf of Gopal Thakur Mandir of Varanasi. While giving the ruling on the writ petition, justice Srivastava said, ” Gita is a dharma shastra of India and it may be considered as the National Religious Book or “Rashtriya dharma shastra”. According to him, since we have a recognised national flag and a national anthem, we should have a rashtriya dharma shastra and Srimad Bhagvad Gita can only take its place. In support of his argument he said, “The Gita inspired our national struggle of freedom and all walks of our life.” He quoted Article 51-A of Indian constitution and added in his order that “It is the duty of every citizen of India, irrespective of caste, creed or religion to follow the dharma propounded by the Bhagvad Gita.”

Before making any comment on his verdict, let us know, What does Article 51-A of our constitution describe?

It mentions about fundamental duties of every citizen of India ; to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspires the national struggle for freedom; to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India; to value and preserve the rich heritage of the composite culture; to have compassion for living creatures and to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavor and achievement etc.

Now let us see how far Gita complies with the main theme of Article 51-A of our constitution. There is no doubt that Gita had great role to inspire the national leaders to move for struggle for Independence. It was the source of inspiration to the struggling masses who sacrificed their lives in the name of our country. National leaders like Rishi Arobindo, Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Shahid Bhagat Singh, Vir Savarkar and a band of young Indians took Gita in their hands and jumped on to the freedom movement and strirred the British imperialism till the foreign rulers left our soil.

The patriots took inspiration from Gita, followed the path shown by the Lord and plunged in to the freedom movement and vowed to free the Dharti Mata from the chain of sufferings. The popular guideline says, “Wherever there is Krishna, there is the righteousness and wherever there is righteousness, there is victory (Jatha Krishna tatha Dharma, jatha Dharma tatha jay)”.

Now the question is that what are the other factors and noble ideas lying in the Gita which can inspire us to become perfect human being and achieve the best of our Selfhood? Let us discuss them one by one:-

Srimad Bhagvad Gita or simply Gita explains to us what is right and what is wrong; what is justice and what is injustice and all other factors of Dharma by virtue of which ordinary men can be Godmen (Amritasya Putra). Gita is the Yoga Shastra or the scripture of communion. Yoga teaches us about union with the supreme God or Parambrahma and according to our spiritual belief, Krishna is the supreme God.

Lord Krishna taught us through Gita how can we overcome the earthly sufferings, elevate ourselves from the hallucinations or illusions (Maya), achieve the best qualities of human life and attain the eternal bliss.

Gita teaches us about Karma yoga (principle of action) and Jnana yoga (principle of knowledge) and gives a common formula to everybody (6/5) - which means that one should uplift himself by one’s own self; let him not degrade himself, the self (Atma) alone is the enemy of the Self (Gita 6/5). In other words it is said that we can be our best friends and we can be our worst enemies.

But how we can be our best friends? Gita tells us the mystery of achieving it.

First, we shall have to be true yogi, that is, a person who is united with the God in all respects, pure in heart, master of his self, has controlled his senses, whose self has become the self of all beings, is not attached though engaged in work (Gita 5 / 7).

In Karma yoga, God never tells us to give up doing work. Because, as soon the cult or tradition of doing work will cease, the creation will be destroyed. In (Gita 3/22) Karma Yoga, God says that He has nothing to do, nor to achieve anything in this universe, still He does his job, otherwise the rhythm of creation will be disturbed. If people follow the inactive God, they will cease doing any work and as a result, there will be destruction all over. Therefore, God also does his work.

This is, of course, a very pragmatic approach for creation of new avenues in the domain of human being or to say in the universe.

Gita is the Upanishad, a highest form of philosophy established on Jnana Yoga.

In Gita (Ch. 14), there is the very interesting Doctrine of Triguna or Tri-Virtue Theory. Virtues are—Satta, Raja and Tama. Human nature, their food, living style, actions and everything have been classified according to the Triguna doctrine. Lord Krishna gave us the new definition of caste system based on Triguna. According to this theory, there are only four castes—Brahmin, Khatriya, Vaisya and Sudra. When there is maximum Satta virtue in a person and less of others, he is a Brahmin; when Raja is more in a person and less of others, he is a Khatriya; when there is the combination of Raja and Tama, he is a Vaisya and when there is more of Tama in a person, he is a Sudra. By
birth, we are all Sudra but our motto should be to become Brahmins. The popular version says, “Janmana jayate Sudra, sanskarat Dwija uchyate” which means that everybody takes birth as Sudra , but by virtue of teachings and reforms, can become Brahmin. That means, the son of Brahmin may not be Brahmin or the son of Khatriya may not be Khatriya etc. The caste system based on Gita does not give approval of hereditary or traditional norms of caste classification.

Sudra can be elevated to Vaisya, Vaisya can be elevated to Khatriya and Khatriya can be elevated to Brahmin and they are interchangeable. For example, Rishi Viswamitra was born in a family of Khatriya but he could become a good Brahmin, whereas though born of Brahmin parents, Dronacharya took the profession of a Khatriya .

Similarly, Satyakam was born as a Sudra but he could prove himself to be a perfect Brahmin. Swami Vivekananda advocated that everybody should try to become perfect Brahmin not by religion but by virtue. There is similar mention in the Buddhist scripture, Dhammapada.
According to Gita (14/18) persons with Satta Guna abodes to the upper berth above the heaven, Rajas rest at heaven or below to it, and Tamas at hell or below it.

Division of caste on the basis of Triguna or Tri-virtues is very progressive system to build a true secular society. Not only Hindus, but Christians, Muslims, Sikhs-all can be classified as Brahmin, Khatriya, Vaisya and Sudra.

In Gita, God said not to be confined within the cult of Triguna, but one needs to transcend Triguna and to rise above the domain of Triguna, to become a free man untouched by the influence of three virtues or Triguna. Trigunateet persons, who have superseded the reign of Triguna, get their berth with the supreme lord at the Vaikunthalok. This is, of course, very difficult task but possible if he is successful in establishing his union with the supreme God. But how?

Gita is the best guideline for him. For that, God has set the conception of Sthitapragyan, where the mind and soul are full of bliss, free from any bondage and devoid of any ego.

In this stage, (Gita 2/70) it is described that while in the stage of Sthitapragyan, he gets only peace and has no desires, in him all desires enter like waters into the sea, which is motionless though ever being filled.

In Gita, there are universal teachings. For example, in Gita (2/66), it is said that without balance of mind, there is neither intelligence nor concentration; without concentration, no peace can be achieved and without peace, how can there be happiness?

In Gita, there is commitment of forgiveness by the God. He commits to his devotees saying that once they surrender to the will of God, they will be forgiven of their sins.

Of course, after getting the grace of God, no one can commit any sin.(Gita 18/66)

There is great hope for us when God says, “He, who thinks for the welfare of the others, can never fall into misery” Gita (6/ 40). Gita also recommends about the welfare of the society.

There is spirit of socialism in Gita. God declares that who cooks for himself only and does not think for others, he is selfish and eats only the sin and not the food. (3/13), he should be punished.

In this version of Gita, there is the reflection of fraternity, extension of love to others, sharing of well and woe to others and joining hands to a greater society.

The spirit of socialism and welfare moved Mahatma Gandhi. He always kept this sacred book with him, German philosophers Maxmuller and Sophenhour, the British philosopher Bertrand Russel and the American scientist-philosopher Einstien were fans of Gita. According to them, it is the unique book on this earth ever composed. According to the veteran philosopher Ralph Waldo Trine, Gita is the book of philosophy which has explained the finer qualities of human being and the complete logical base by means of which one can attain the eternal peace of sublimation. Alfred B. Nobel, when discovered the fatal Dynamite and saw the extent of destruction caused by it, he was very worried. At that time he got a copy of the English version of the Gita, read it thoroughly for several times and commented saying that he would not have discovered the TNT Dynamite, if he had gone through the Gita earlier. Later on, he founded the Nobel prize to promote peace.

At the end of Gita, we get Bhakti Yoga, where there is mention of the devotion to God and the complete surrender of the devotee to the will of God, when he says,”Karisye Bachanang Taba” (Gita 18/ 73)

In exchange (Gita 9/31), God says, “My devotees are never ruined, I protect them from all dangers.” Devotion is the last word of Godhood. Ordinary man can be Godman or son of God when he becomes God’s beloved one. At this stage of passion, emotion and love for God, the two are virtually identified as one, the devotee losses all earthly attachments and enjoys the spiritual ecstasy. In him, there is no ego, no anger, no jealousy and no stir. Everything is full of eternal bliss and divinity. He cannot hate others, cannot speak ill of others, cannot think bad of others and he sees everything alike.

Historical Myth:
Gita is not only a holy book meant only for a particular sect or community but it is the universal sacred book. Anybody, irrespective of caste, creed or religion can follow the teachings of Gita and elevate himself into a nobleman.

Gita was not written even for the Hindus—Gita was uttered by the Vedic or Sanatani God Sri Krishna. At that time, there was no religion in the name of Hindu. There was Vedic religion and the scripture was the Veda, propounded by the Aryan sages. Lord Krishna invoked Gita three thousand years B.C. when there was neither Hindu, nor Christian, nor Muslim, nor any other sect. The Vedic Aryans used to worship Rama, Krishna and other incarnations of Lord Vishnu and His other two of the trio forms, that is, Lord Brahma and Lord Maheswara. Krishna who himself was Vishnu or Narayana took birth as human being. He, himself is the supreme God who came down to earth for our salvation.

By the by, at around 300 B.C., emperor Alexander of Greece invaded north India. His soldiers could not utter the name `Sind’, the river of north India. They used to call it as `Hind’ and the Aryan residents of either side of Sind river were called as Hindu. Later on, by the process of Aryanisation throughout the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere, we became identified as Hindu. In the later years came Christian, Muslim, Sikh and other religions.

Gita is not only the holy book for the Hindus, it can be followed by any person belonging to any caste, creed or religion. Gita preaches the noble lessons to us. It is the man making scripture by which one can attain peace and happiness. Gita teaches us to love all and not to hate others. It also teaches us to achieve the power of patience and tolerance. The love as recommended in Gita is extended to entire human society and to all creatures.

From Gita only, we can find the universal formula to establish global peace.

(The writer can be contacted at 16/23, W.E.A, 1st Floor, Karol Bagh, New Delhi -110005.)