India is Not Free
The other day the people of the US sadly recalled the bombing of Hiroshima. It speaks volumes for the ordinary people. India too has developed nuclear weaponry in reply to this sad turn of affairs on mother Earth. It set me thinking: India is not free.
India is not free to live the ideal of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. India has to build an armory to guard her against invasion and plunder, against bombardment. If she were free from fear, she would have grown more crops, more beautiful textiles, more baskets of flowers to distribute to the world.
Had India been free from the rat race that prods the trade of lumber, she would have guarded her valleys full of trees, medicinal herbs and rare species of birds and grown more tropical animals, fertile lands and heavy waterfalls like the Doodhganga.
Imitating the Western ideal, Indians have adopted technology driven comforts such as the air-conditioner. Had she been free from international codes of the standard of living, Indians would have never wished for skyscrapers with glass walls and low false ceilings. Rather Indians would have spent more on building well ventilated stone havelis with three feet thick mud terraces such as around the Jaisalmer Fort.
India might have felt that the riddance of a race that never came to stay was independence. But viewing it from the twenty-first century I can say it was only towards increased dependence. We seem to be waiting for approval from the English for almost every step we take. We have completely lost the ancient confidence of Sanskrit teachings. Even to be an acclaimed professor of Sanskrit, an Indian has to be employed in a western university.
Indian medicine, be it herbs or yoga therapy, has no more brilliant practitioners practically because the brilliant minds of India go for university based allopathic medical training. Is there anyone, really, in India who can independently study how to extract medicine from herbs to a point of refinement that can answer back the chemists without fear of prosecution?
India is not free at all. No political leader, no bureaucrat, no religious guru, no technocrat and no archeologist have ever felt free to declare one of her ancient architectural marvels as a ‘wonder’. What kind of powers do any of them have: the freedom to amass wealth; the freedom to scandalize people; the freedom to escape into another country the moment their misdoings are found out? Into that heaven of freedom has my country awoken?
Had India not been decried for her special brand of religion, had there been no monotheistic influence on the naked Indian mind, the land would have simply worshipped the rivers, the fire and the rain gods. India is not free from judgmentalism. The last one to have attempted to free her of criticism was Swami Vivekananda over a century ago. Had India been free, we would have continued in the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, where every grain is God.