The crisis in psyche of India......HINDUS WAKE UP NOW THE TIME HAS COME

The crisis in psyche of India

Author: David Frawley alias Vamadeva Sasthry
Publication: The Organiser
Date: May 13, 2001

A defeatist tendency exists in the psyche of many modern Indians that
is perhaps unparalleled in any other country today. An inner conflict
bordering on a civil war rages in the minds of the country's elite.
The main effort of many of its cultural leaders appears to be to pull
the country down or at least to remake it in a foreign image.
The elite of India suffers from a fundamental alienation from the
traditions and culture of the land that would be less poignant had
they been born and raised in a hostile country. The ruling elite
appears to be little more than a native incarnation of the old
colonial rulers. This new English-speaking aristocracy prides itself
in being disconnected from the very soil and people that gave it
birth.
There is probably no other country in the world where it has become a
national pastime among its educated class to denigrate its own culture
and history, however great. When great archaeological discoveries of
India's past are found, for example, they are not a subject for
national pride but are ridiculed, as if they represent only the
imagination of backward Chauvinistic elements within the culture.
There is probably no other country where the majority religion,
however enlightened is ridiculed, while minority religions, however
fundamentalist, are doted upon. The majority religion is taxed and
regulated while minority religions is carefully monitored and limited
as to what it can teach, minority religions can teach what they want,
even if anti-national or backward in nature. Books are banned that
offend minority religious sentiments but praised if they cast insults
on majority beliefs.
There is probably no other country where regional, caste and family
loyalties are more important than the national interest. Political
parties exist not to promote a national agenda but to sustain one
region or group of people in the country at the expense of a whole.
Each group wants as big a piece of the national pie as it can get, not
realizing that the advantages it gains means deprivation for other
groups. Yet when those who were previously deprived gain power, they
too seek the same unequal advantages that causes further inequality
and discontent.
India's affirmative action code is by far the most extreme in the
world, trying to raise up certain segments of the population
regardless of merit, and prevent others from gaining positions however
qualified they may be. In the guise of removing caste, a new casteism
has arisen where one's caste is more important than one's
qualifications either in gaining entrance into a school or in finding
it job when one graduates. People view the Government not as their own
creation but as a welfare state from which to take the maximum
personal benefit, regardless of the consequences for the country as a
whole.
Outside people need not pull Indians down. Indians are already quite
busy keeping any of their people and the country as a whole from
rising up. They would rather see their neighbours or the nation fail
if they are not giver, the top position. It is only outside of India
that Indians succeed, often remarkably well because their native
talents are not stifled by the dominant cultural self-negativity and
rabid divisiveness that exists in the country today.
Political parties in India we gaining power as a means of amassing
personal wealth and robbing the nation. Political leaders include
gangsters, charlatans and buffoons who would stop short at nothing to
gain power for themselves and their coteries. Even so-called modem or
liberal parties resemble more the courts of kings, where personal
loyalty is more important than any democratic participation. Once they
gain power politicians routinely do little but cheat the people for
their own advantage. Even honest, politicians find that they cannot
function without some deference to the more numerous corrupt leaders
who often have a stranglehold on the bureaucracy.
Politicians divide the country into warring vote banks and place one
community against another. They offer favours to communities, like
bribes to make sure that they are elected or stay in power. They
campaign on slogans that appeal to community fears and suspicions
rather than create any national consensus or harmony. They hold power
based upon blame and hatred rather than on any positive programmes for
social change. They inflame the uneducated masses with propaganda
rather than work to make people aware of real social problem like
overpopulation, poor infrastructure or lack of education. Should a
decent Government come to power, the Opposition pursues pulling it
down as its main goal, so that they can gain power for themselves. The
idea of a constructive or supportive opposition is hard to find. The
goal is to gain power for oneself and to not allow any one else to
succeed. To further their ambitions Indian politicians will manipulate
the foreign press to denigrate their opponents even if it means
spreading lies and rumours and making the country and anathema in the
eyes of the outside world. Petty conflicts in India are blown out of
proportion in the foreign media, not by foreign journalists but by
Indians seeking to use the media to score points against their own
opponents in the country. The Indian who are responsible for the news
of India in the foreign press spread venom and distortion about their
own country, perhaps better than any foreigner who dislikes the
culture ever could. Killing of one Christian missionary becomes a
national media event of anti-Christian attacks while the murder of
hundreds of Hindus is taken casually as without any real importance.
Missionary aggression is extolled as social upliftment, while Hindu
efforts at self-defense against the conversion onslaught are portrayed
as rabid fundamentalism. One Indian journalist recently lamented that
Western armies would not come to India to chastise the political
groups he was opposed to, as if he was still looking for the colonial
powers to save him!
Let us look at the type of leaders that India now has today with its
Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Jayalalita or Subrahmanya
Swamy to mention but a few. Such individuals are little more than
warlords who surround themselves with psychophants. Modern Indian
politicians appear more like colonial rulers looting their own
country, following a divide and rule policy, to keep the people so
weak that their power cannot be challenged. Corruption exists almost
everywhere and bribery is the main way to do business in nearly all
fields. India has an entrenched bureaucracy that resists change and
stifles development, just out of sheer obstinacy and not wanting to
give up any control. Now the Congress Party, the oldest in this
predominantly Hindu nation, has given its leadership to an Italian
Catholic woman simply because as the widow of the last Gandhi, she can
carry on the family torch, as if family loyalty were still the main
basis of political credibility in the country. And such a leader and a
party are deemed progressive!
The strange thing is that India is not a banana republic of recent
vintage but one of the oldest and most venerable civilizations in the
world. Its culture is not trumpeting a militant and fundamentalist
religion trying to conquer the world for the one true faith but
represents a vaster and more cosmic vision.
India has given birth to the main religions that have dominated East
Asia historically, the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh, which are noted
for tolerance and spirituality. It has produced Sanskrit, perhaps the
world's greatest language. It has given us the incredible spiritual
systems of Yoga and its great traditions of meditation and self-
realization. As the world looks forward to a more universal model of
spirituality and a world view defined by consciousness rather than by
religious dogma these traditions are perhaps the most important legacy
to draw upon for creating a future enlightened citilization. Yet the
irony is that rather than embracing its own great traditions, the
modem Indian psyche prefers to slavishly imitate worn out trends in
Western intellectual thought like or even to write apologetics for
Christian and Islamic missionary aggression. Though living in India,
in proximity to temples, yogis and great rivals, most modem Indian
intellectuals are oblivious to the soul of the land. They might as
well be living in England or China for all they know of their own
country. They are isolated in their own alien ideas as if in a tower
of iron. If they choose to rediscover India it is more likely to occur
by reading the books of Western travelers visiting the country, than
by their own direct experience of the people around them.
The dominant Indian intelligentsia cannot appreciate even the writings
of the many great modern Indian sages, like Vivekanand or Aurobindo,
who wrote in good English and understood the national psyche and how
to revive. It is as if they were so successfully brainwashed against
their own culture that they cannot even look at it, even if presented
to them clearly in a modern light.
If the enlightened thought of India is going to arise it cannot
through the current educated elite of the country. Various spiritual
groups in India may be able to promote it, including in foreign lands,
but they are becoming a minority and denigrated in their own land.
Given such a twisted and self-negative national psyche, can there be
any hope for the country? At the surface the situation looks quite
dismal. India appears like a nation without nationalism or at least
without any national pride or any real connection to its own history.
Self-negativity and even a cultural self-hatred abound. The elite that
dominates the universities, the media, the Government and the business
arenas is the illegitimate child of foreign interests and is often
still controlled by foreign ideas and foreign resources. It cannot
resist a bribe and there is much money from overseas to draw upon.
Indian politicians do not hesitate to sell their country down the
river and it does not require a high price. Fortunately signs of a new
awakening can be found.
There is a new interest ill the older traditions of the country and
many people now visit temples and tirthas. Many young people now want
to follow the older heritage of the land and revive it in the modem
age. The computer revolution and the new science are reconnecting with
the great intelligence of the Indian psyche that produced the
unfathomable mantras of the Vedas. Slowly but surely a new
intelligentsia is arising and now several important journalists are
writing and exposing the hypocrisy of the anti-Hindu Indian elite. Yet
only if this trend grows rapidly can there be a counter to the
defeatist trend of the country. But it requires great effort
initiative and creativity, not simply lamenting over the past but
envisioning a new future in harmony with the deeper aspirations of the
region. One must also not forget that the English educated elite
represents only about three per cent of the country, however much
power they wield. The remaining population is much more likely to
preserve the older traditions of the land. Even illiterate villagers
often know more of real Indian culture than do major Indian
journalists and writers.
Meanwhile overseas Hindus have become successful, well educated and a
affluent, not by abandoning their culture but by holding to it They
see Hindus culture not as a weakness but as a strength. Free of the
Indian nation and its fragmented psyche, they can draw upon their
cultural resources in a way that people born in India seldom can.
Perhaps they can return to the country and become its new leaders. Let
us hope that some hood this call.
However, first this strange alienated elite has to be removed and they
will not do so without a fight. The sad thing is that they would
probably rather destroy their own country than have it function apart
from their control. The future of India looks like a new Kurukshetra
and it requires a similar miracle for victory. Such a war will be
fought not on some outer battlefield but in the hearts and minds of
people, from where they choose to draw their inspiration and find
their connection with life. Yet regardless of outer appearances, the
inner soul of the land cannot be put down so easily. It has been
nourished by many centuries to tapes by great yogis and sages. This
soul of Bharat Mata will rise up again through Kali (destruction) to
Durga (strength). The question is how long and difficult the process
must be.

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