Opinions
Modi (continued)
First, an apology: in the last issue "Modi returned", I overlooked an error, “RSS founder, Deendayal Upadhyaya…” should read “BJP President,…” Most Hindus know that the RSS was founded by Keshav Hedgewar in 1925, when Upadhyaya, author of the philosophy of Integral Humanism, (IH) adopted by the RSS in the mid-1960s, was only 9. My recurrent complaint about Indian news here is the patronising way Western media treat India, especially Hinduism. Even when positively motivated, writers – including apparent Indians, slip regularly into stereotypes created by the
influential BEICo and British Raj to smear India and Indians, to consolidate their hegemony. A May 23, 2019 article in the Washington Post (Slater and Masih) reporting Modi’s win, included the following: 1. “voters endorsed his (Modi’s) vision of a muscular, assertive and fundamentally Hindu India” The Western press is fond of branding anything Hindu as “fundamental”, and negatively used, implying malevolence.
2. “Modi, a charismatic and polarizing politician who is part of a crop of right-leaning populist leaders around the globe.” All politicians are polarising; it’s inherent in any game played by opposing teams.
3. The son of a tea seller. This might well be framed and hung in every editorial room in the West! It’s a great icon for tea-sellers, even for the US Tea Party, something for them to look up to, or shoot for, though Americans are more likely to shoot at someone!
4. “Modi’s win is a victory for a form of religious nationalism that views India – home to a diversity of faiths – as essentially a Hindu nation and seeks to jettison the secularism promoted by the country’s founders. Although India is about 80 percent Hindu, it is also home to Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and other religious communities”. So was Pakistan at its founding! I could write a book on the half-truths in this sentence. India (Bharat) is essentially and originally a Dharmic nation (Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh), starting on the basis of Sanatan Dharma (popularly called Hinduism), which is home-grown and quintessentially India; it was tolerant and kind enough to rescue and harbour foreign faiths (Abrahamic, Parsis) at critical times in their history, hence the diversity. Later, Muslims and Christians came to trade but stayed to conquer, by sword and word. India is not home to the Abrahamic religions: Muslims look to Mecca/Medina/Jerusalem as HOME; Jews to Jerusalem, and Christians to Jerusalem/Rome! Secularism was a ploy to achieve independence on terms acceptable to all social, political and religious groups in India, the minorities having grown through forced conversion by Mughals and the British. Secularism virtually replaced religion; it suited atheists, communists and the materialistic capitalists that the Raj had bred; it failed to heal Indian society, fractured by conquest and class divisions that had created many contrary groups unique to the Indian democracy. It worked as long as the new leaders held power, willing to ignore history, heritage, the majority and the poor, nicely benefitting wealthy locals and Western interests. It reflected the Western power struggle – the burgeoning Cold War. The founders of Bharat (India) were ancient and Vaidic, millennia old, not recent and secular.
Inevitably the worm will turn. The RSS adopted integral humanism as its philosophy in the mid-sixties. Upadhyaya argued that “humankind had four hierarchically-organised attributes of body, mind, intellect and soul, which corresponded to four universal objectives – kama (desire or satisfaction), artha (wealth), dharma (moral duties) and moksha (liberation or salvation).
While none could be ignored, dharma was 'basic', and moksha 'ultimate'” as society’s goals. He rejected both capitalism and communism, since they were both materialistic, one focussed on individual aggrandisement and corporate welfare, the other on welfare of the masses.
Nehru’s policies had promoted Western values rather than Indian ones, enriched a few, impoverished many, helped cities, neglected villages and country districts (70% of population, the poor (around 40%) and the very poor 15-20% of the population; they put rights above duty and responsibility. Instead, a thoughtful blend would respect the dynamic interplay of society, culture and the economy.
Integral humanism opposes unbridled consumerism as alien to Indian culture and a mindless pursuit of material wealth, preferring a restrained and considered approach to satisfying one's desires, with moderation and concern for the whole community. It supports enterprise individual.
Modi should focus on IH’s principles, restore rural productivity, tackle corruption more vigorously, with his new mandate, and pull back from the western model that is further widening the gap between rich and poor (1% vs 60%).
2. “Modi, a charismatic and polarizing politician who is part of a crop of right-leaning populist leaders around the globe.” All politicians are polarising; it’s inherent in any game played by opposing teams.
3. The son of a tea seller. This might well be framed and hung in every editorial room in the West! It’s a great icon for tea-sellers, even for the US Tea Party, something for them to look up to, or shoot for, though Americans are more likely to shoot at someone!
4. “Modi’s win is a victory for a form of religious nationalism that views India – home to a diversity of faiths – as essentially a Hindu nation and seeks to jettison the secularism promoted by the country’s founders. Although India is about 80 percent Hindu, it is also home to Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and other religious communities”. So was Pakistan at its founding! I could write a book on the half-truths in this sentence. India (Bharat) is essentially and originally a Dharmic nation (Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh), starting on the basis of Sanatan Dharma (popularly called Hinduism), which is home-grown and quintessentially India; it was tolerant and kind enough to rescue and harbour foreign faiths (Abrahamic, Parsis) at critical times in their history, hence the diversity. Later, Muslims and Christians came to trade but stayed to conquer, by sword and word. India is not home to the Abrahamic religions: Muslims look to Mecca/Medina/Jerusalem as HOME; Jews to Jerusalem, and Christians to Jerusalem/Rome! Secularism was a ploy to achieve independence on terms acceptable to all social, political and religious groups in India, the minorities having grown through forced conversion by Mughals and the British. Secularism virtually replaced religion; it suited atheists, communists and the materialistic capitalists that the Raj had bred; it failed to heal Indian society, fractured by conquest and class divisions that had created many contrary groups unique to the Indian democracy. It worked as long as the new leaders held power, willing to ignore history, heritage, the majority and the poor, nicely benefitting wealthy locals and Western interests. It reflected the Western power struggle – the burgeoning Cold War. The founders of Bharat (India) were ancient and Vaidic, millennia old, not recent and secular.
Inevitably the worm will turn. The RSS adopted integral humanism as its philosophy in the mid-sixties. Upadhyaya argued that “humankind had four hierarchically-organised attributes of body, mind, intellect and soul, which corresponded to four universal objectives – kama (desire or satisfaction), artha (wealth), dharma (moral duties) and moksha (liberation or salvation).
While none could be ignored, dharma was 'basic', and moksha 'ultimate'” as society’s goals. He rejected both capitalism and communism, since they were both materialistic, one focussed on individual aggrandisement and corporate welfare, the other on welfare of the masses.
Nehru’s policies had promoted Western values rather than Indian ones, enriched a few, impoverished many, helped cities, neglected villages and country districts (70% of population, the poor (around 40%) and the very poor 15-20% of the population; they put rights above duty and responsibility. Instead, a thoughtful blend would respect the dynamic interplay of society, culture and the economy.
Integral humanism opposes unbridled consumerism as alien to Indian culture and a mindless pursuit of material wealth, preferring a restrained and considered approach to satisfying one's desires, with moderation and concern for the whole community. It supports enterprise individual.
Modi should focus on IH’s principles, restore rural productivity, tackle corruption more vigorously, with his new mandate, and pull back from the western model that is further widening the gap between rich and poor (1% vs 60%).
Sage bush ‘grandmother lode’ of rods
Romeo Kaseram
One of the first warnings I recall as a young boy growing up back home was from my grandmother shouting, wagging a forefinger, and making “monkey face” at me from the window in her smoky kitchen. She was warning me away from underneath the coconut tree.
Her words did not take long to arrive on the wind, and if the tone in its warning was diluted as it filtered through the dark green leaves of the thick black sage bush, her actions were enough to convey its dire intent. It meant if I did not get away from underneath the coconut tree, “Pronto!”, then I would, in Ma’s eternal and punitive words, soon discover, “What o’clock it was!”
There is no need to re-invent the semaphore to try to figure out the signals she was sending to me. Ma was gesticulating in my direction, and no doubt shouting at the top of her voice with a mix of frustration and mixed imprecations, saying in her unique, imitable way: “Father in heaven! Don’t make me put a hand on this boy-child today! He over own-way and harden!”
It was Ma’s eternal fear that a sagging, lengthy branch, or a cascade of dried coconuts, each as solid as a rock, in the space of a heartbeat was about to unerringly fall directly on the top of my head. As she always lamented to the sympathetic neighbour, singing out her onomatopoeic and gesticulant mantra, “Whoosh!! Braps!! Just so! Coconuts falling on top of his little head!”
Now Ma’s sympathetic listener was himself the village comedian, and never missing a beat, would sometimes mischievously call out to me sotto voce, saying, “Coconut-head! I hope you’re behaving yourself today, and not giving your grandmother a heart attack!”
It is such the black sage bush was an early nemesis, more than this sympathetic, mischievous neighbour. Here was the source of Ma’s many “switches”, the “grandmother lode”, so to speak, of many hastily acquired, limber rods of correction. It seems during my career as a young boy its branches were always readily accessible, since black sage bushes proliferated throughout the landscape, in every nook, cranny, ready-made for granny. So readily did the branch part from the tree, it would be easily broken off and quickly deployed with a resonant “Whaps! Whaps!” on the seat of the pants to keep my young person focused on the narrow road to a healthy, well-balanced adulthood.
Such was my boyhood I was always on the alert, knowing there were many yet-to-be-discovered offences committed the day before. I would quickly go on the defensive, peeping from behind a door, when I saw Ma breaking a branch off the black sage bush in the early morning. However, in those days a cutting from the black sage was also a handy toothbrush. Covertness marked my life as a young boy, living on the edge, and by the skin of my teeth.
There are questions that run across my mind on those few days, now that I am securely ensconced in adulthood, with a long-awaited second childhood waving its kite to me in the not-too-far distance. In these moments I enjoy quiet, uninterrupted contemplation, wondering: “With all of my early experiences in life, how come I did not chose a career path to become a soldier, a secret agent, or a spy? Or even a detective; or a private investigator? Or even a customs officer; or an actor playing at a customs officer as they do in those reality television shows?”
It would seem my rascally boyhood career provided more than adequate experience for these careers, since early in life I acquired the aptitude to scout out any new location Ma and I visited for the ubiquitous black sage bush. I had grown so adept at being a boy scouting that by the time I entered into my teenage years, through anxiety, industry, and patient reconnaissance, I had ably and mentally mapped the coordinates of every black sage bush within a ten-kilometer radius from where I grew up.
In my even more contemplative moments, there are times when I rue the day I was not in a better position in life to have aided the creators of the GPS, since I am certain inspiration for this device was partially derived from anxieties and reconnaissance invoked by an over-protective grandmother.
One question I will eventually contemplate is, “Why did I not map the coconut trees?” Perhaps I will discover the answer to be an easy one: that there were too many coconut trees in the neighbourhood in my time growing up back home. Or that the probability of a coconut hitting a young boy’s head was far less than being accurately hit on the behind, and the back of the legs, with a branch hastily broken off those proliferating and abundant black sage bushes.
It was Ma’s eternal fear that a sagging, lengthy branch, or a cascade of dried coconuts, each as solid as a rock, in the space of a heartbeat was about to unerringly fall directly on the top of my head. As she always lamented to the sympathetic neighbour, singing out her onomatopoeic and gesticulant mantra, “Whoosh!! Braps!! Just so! Coconuts falling on top of his little head!”
Now Ma’s sympathetic listener was himself the village comedian, and never missing a beat, would sometimes mischievously call out to me sotto voce, saying, “Coconut-head! I hope you’re behaving yourself today, and not giving your grandmother a heart attack!”
It is such the black sage bush was an early nemesis, more than this sympathetic, mischievous neighbour. Here was the source of Ma’s many “switches”, the “grandmother lode”, so to speak, of many hastily acquired, limber rods of correction. It seems during my career as a young boy its branches were always readily accessible, since black sage bushes proliferated throughout the landscape, in every nook, cranny, ready-made for granny. So readily did the branch part from the tree, it would be easily broken off and quickly deployed with a resonant “Whaps! Whaps!” on the seat of the pants to keep my young person focused on the narrow road to a healthy, well-balanced adulthood.
Such was my boyhood I was always on the alert, knowing there were many yet-to-be-discovered offences committed the day before. I would quickly go on the defensive, peeping from behind a door, when I saw Ma breaking a branch off the black sage bush in the early morning. However, in those days a cutting from the black sage was also a handy toothbrush. Covertness marked my life as a young boy, living on the edge, and by the skin of my teeth.
There are questions that run across my mind on those few days, now that I am securely ensconced in adulthood, with a long-awaited second childhood waving its kite to me in the not-too-far distance. In these moments I enjoy quiet, uninterrupted contemplation, wondering: “With all of my early experiences in life, how come I did not chose a career path to become a soldier, a secret agent, or a spy? Or even a detective; or a private investigator? Or even a customs officer; or an actor playing at a customs officer as they do in those reality television shows?”
It would seem my rascally boyhood career provided more than adequate experience for these careers, since early in life I acquired the aptitude to scout out any new location Ma and I visited for the ubiquitous black sage bush. I had grown so adept at being a boy scouting that by the time I entered into my teenage years, through anxiety, industry, and patient reconnaissance, I had ably and mentally mapped the coordinates of every black sage bush within a ten-kilometer radius from where I grew up.
In my even more contemplative moments, there are times when I rue the day I was not in a better position in life to have aided the creators of the GPS, since I am certain inspiration for this device was partially derived from anxieties and reconnaissance invoked by an over-protective grandmother.
One question I will eventually contemplate is, “Why did I not map the coconut trees?” Perhaps I will discover the answer to be an easy one: that there were too many coconut trees in the neighbourhood in my time growing up back home. Or that the probability of a coconut hitting a young boy’s head was far less than being accurately hit on the behind, and the back of the legs, with a branch hastily broken off those proliferating and abundant black sage bushes.
