India in AD 999, a mixture of pearls, dung & 'Chaltha Hai'
1,000 Years Ago
The principle of duty sans reward, as the gita enjoined, gave birth to modern india's 'chalta hai' attitude.
........... the first millennium in India was the end of one phase of our history and the beginning of another. For, in the very first year of the 11th century began the Turkish invasion, which eventually led to the six century-long dominance of India by Turko-Afghan and Mughal rulers, during which the very face of India changed.......
....For about a thousand years, roughly between 600 BC and AD 500, India was a dynamic, progressive and prosperous nation but had long since slid eyeless into the Dark Ages......
.... India was not alone in this predicament. It was the Dark Ages in Europe too at this time. However, Europe eventually pulled out of the Dark Ages. India did not. In many ways, India today is where it was a thousand years ago. Its institutions have changed and so has its economic and technological environment, but its socio-cultural ethos remains shockingly medieval...
.....How did we get to this state? Our general tendency is to blame it on foreign invasions. This is convenient, for it absolves us of the responsibility for our predicament. But it won't do. Only the weak blame others; the strong blame themselves..
....The significant factor here seems to be that during virtually the entire dynamic phase of our civilisation, the religion of the dominant classes in India was Buddhism, not Hinduism. The two religions, though offshoots of the Vedic religion, were entirely unlike each other. Buddhism was a demanding religion, which imposed absolute dharmic imperatives on human conduct and insisted that man should strive to transcend his environment and his own innate nature. In contrast, Hinduism was an undemanding, I'm-OK-you're-OK religion, which accepted ethical pluralism, assigned to each caste its own dharma and advised man to be contented with his lot, however despicable his lot might be. Buddhism inculcated discipline and endeavour, Hinduism inculcated passivity and fatalism. The emphasis of Buddhism was on conduct, that of Hinduism on faith.
There were no gods in Buddhism to turn to for forgiveness or redemption. So also in Jainism. Even Upanishadic Hinduism rejected the concept of god as a creator-ruler and reduced divinity to a pure abstraction, the all-pervasive underlying principle of the cosmic order. India, which is today a land of flamboyant religiosity, was for many centuries dominated by rationalist, godless religions, incredible though it might seem...
So it was that the chalta hai syndrome became our national malady, characterised by a dismal work ethic, corruption, hypocrisy, servility (towards superiors) and tyranny (towards inferiors). These attitudes have implicit socio-religious sanction in India. Is it any wonder that corruption is pervasive and brazen in today's India, and no one feels the slightest guilt about it, since we believe that any wrong or sin, however vile, can be made right by performing suitable rituals? ....
....Besides, there is no road back to the past, except in our fancies. However glorious our heritage, we cannot live on it today.
We have to move on. It is science and technology that would save us, not any gods, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Christian.
A true patriot today is the man who hates India in its present plight and does something about it and not the man who proclaims that India is the greatest nation and does nothing to relieve its misery. To claim, as our netas do, that we are today a great nation is sheer folly, for the pretence of being great obviates the need to strive for greatness. But then, as Al-Beruni said about Indians in the 11th century AD: "Folly is an illness for which there is no medicine."
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