Between You and Me: Flight to Societal Moksha

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PART ONE

Social constitutions and personalities have guided the Indian subcontinent for ages. This has given birth to legal constitutions, governance structures and attitudes. Let us review some snapshots and see it from the perspective of the towering personalities of today, we, the people of India.

1

Ancient India: Eklavya and Karna

Before we begin to remodel India or any other structure, I would like to share a belief that the social inequity which lies within us burdens our soul. This inequity has hampered the spirit of entrepreneurship and creation of opportunity. In India, it has its seeds in two universal stories of yore. Unless we clean ourselves we will be unable to go forth. Many centuries later, the heroes of these stories – Eklavya and Karna – still seek redemption.

India and its texts are glorious. They have potential for tomorrow, but the glory of any remarkable civilisation is only as strong as its weakest link. Societies that succeed are those that replace or strengthen the weak links. Eklavya and Karna seek the miracle of justice. All over the world, in different names, this is true.

Eklavya

One day, a guru was teaching archery to his five princely disciples. A poor boy was observing them from a distance. As the years went by, the princes grew up to become great archers. One prince, Arjuna, was superlative and an epitome of all things good. He was so good that later the Lord himself became Arjuna’s charioteer during the battle at Kurukshetra, and Arjuna received the greatest wisdom from the Lord, which we know as the Bhagwad Gita.

The skills of archery were imparted in the guru-shishya (teacher-pupil) tradition, a tradition that some in India cry that we should return to, as part of our glorious past. In my view, this practice has largely been given the go-by, correctly so. The West adopted a system of teaching that is more open to debate, a university system that is egalitarian and with a greater sense of enquiry. Thus, India after the creation of zero, has no major new discovery of knowledge to show. We have adopted the outline of a university format, but not all of its content. The results are there to see (incremental progress) or ignore at our peril.

In this guru-shishya tradition, the guru’s house became your university and you lived as a son and servant, rolled into one. The guru imparted knowledge, trained you in the finer nuances of life and study, and thus became the ‘giver’, and the pupil became the ‘receiver’. Admission was not universal. You paid nothing (as if labour and obeisance is not payment) and were beholden for life. [I did not learn Indian classical music because we had to learn it under a guru. It was not taught in schools and colleges by a guru.]

Continuing with the story, this poor boy (Eklavya) watched the guru teaching his pupils through the bushes, and absorbed the learning not by direct instruction, but by keen observation (what we now understand as distance learning). He mastered the techniques and became a great archer.

Then one day, he walked up to the guru to thank him. At the guru’s request, Eklavya demonstrated his archery skills. He turned out to be an exceptional, far superior than the five princes who were micro-managed by the guru.

The guru then demanded Eklavya’s thumb (without which an archer is useless) as ‘tuition fee’. How ironic that the guru did not take the fee from the princes? Such was the power of the guru-shishya tradition (which functioned at that time, just like many other practices today) that Eklavya obeyed the guru’s command. He unflinchingly cut his thumb and gave it to him. The text says, he did so gladly, but I am not sure of that. Over 5,000 years divide us – the modern thinking individuals and Eklavya. This is mentioned as a noble act in the Mahabharata. It shows how the constitution of a given time shackles a society for centuries.

We have been stuck for ages in the mire of blind traditions, caste, parentage and privileges that are couched in garbled deceit. People even today proudly say what matters is: ‘who’ you know, more than ‘what’ you know; and if you don’t know the ‘who’ there is to know, then ‘what’ you know is often doomed. Merit is lost as is the potential of the society. We failed to understand that change must be enabled preemptively – to make the acquisition and discovery of knowledge cheaper, better and faster. Importantly, it must also be impartial.

In the story, as in life then, merit was measured not on its own value but stacked against the neighbour’s achievement – Eklavya vs the five princes. An unequal and insular society was thus created. In spite of the hundreds of heroic battles won in our history, in spite of the great sages and other wealth of this land, in the end the net reality was that India mostly lost to outsiders for 1,000 years, ever since the invasions began. It wouldn’t have been a different story, had the invaders attacked us 4,000 years ago. Through all of this, the majority of the privileged worked only to maintain their privilege and almost always sided against merit. We preferred to prefer caste.

We have carried this caste system, thinly veiled, into our bureaucracy, and, except (perhaps) the most pertinent exception of the last general elections, into our politics. We are paying the price in governance and in stature as a society. We have ensured that we keep the insider as outsider; we keep our own people at a distance because we do not celebrate merit and success. We measure it against the immediate neighbours just as the guru measured Eklavya only against his pupils. A whole society was co-subjugated and in its delusion forgot that it had subjugated itself. Later, this would also lead to conversion to other religions in some cases as what is said: it was an attempt to escape this subjugation. Conversion or time may have pacified the torment, but I am not sure if this conversion, for this reason, was in itself not a torment. May be the body has partially healed, but the soul is still wounded.

The Eklavyas and not just caste, but all skill and merit, need to find their rightful place. Till the time such injustice is not lifted from our soul, from the soul of India, none of us have a chance to live peacefully. The trick may lie in benchmarking merit with the world and not with our neighbour, thus melting the divisive walls of millenniums.

Karna

The story of Karna is related.

Karna was born to an unmarried princess. She later married a king and gave birth to five sons, the ‘legitimate’ princes. This mother, instead of taking ownership of her firstborn (which would have meant Karna’s story and the Indian society would have been different) packed him off in a basket. She then pushed the basket towards a river. The social ‘constitution’ of the day approved of this action as the ‘only way out’ to save her reputation. The child was saved and grew up to be Karna. In time, he became a friend of the ‘evil’ cousins of his mother’s ‘legitimate’ sons as they were the only ones who gave him love and respect. During the battle at Kurukshetra between the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ cousins, he sided with the ‘evil’ cousins (the only brothers he ever had) – against his mother’s son’s. When the cousins went to the war, they divided the assets of their common family friend – Krishna, the Lord. The ‘evil’ cousins chose the Lord’s vast army, whereas the ‘good’ cousins chose the wisdom of the Lord.

Karna was such an accomplished warrior that foul means had to be employed to defeat him. It was all done to ensure that his mother’s five legitimate sons win the war, with the Lord’s wisdom on their side. What was Karna’s fault? Why did he have to be defeated? Why couldn’t he win? Why couldn’t merit win? This is the challenge of society. It is also the continuing challenge of integration of all societies (Black vs Brown vs White).

Till today, foul means are employed to defeat meritorious Karnas. In the rest of the world, this story was translated into racism, chauvinism, religious superiority and the like. In the capitalist world it got translated against those without capital, and in the communist world against those with capital, or those with a voice of dissent. In the neo-modern world, it is translated as subtle but firm animosity of various clandestine kinds, directed at those who try and change the established order. Fairness and justice must triumph over all. This is what we must unlearn from tradition. Only then will tradition be beautiful.

You and I going forward.

Till the time Eklavya and Karna find redemption there can be no progress, particularly, in the Indian society. The land of a million saints that has witnessed so many revolutions, India has still not made its tryst with destiny. India has yet to cleanse its soul, especially of these two historical wrongs.

The Bhagwad Gita, preached for the world on our soil, is among the greatest texts on life, living and wisdom, not to speak of the tuition it gives on the redemption of the soul. The words narrated at least a few thousand years before any of the other great texts, religious, or otherwise, anywhere in the world. Despite making the head start and having the depth of the narrative, the wisdom of Gita did not spread to the rest of the world. One reason for this was: the ‘constitution’ of the times dictated that you are not supposed to travel far and wide, lest you should lose your caste. So silly it was, like many facets of many constitutions today.

Others, unburdened by such ‘constitutions’, came to India from far and wide. As is human nature, people bring and take away wisdom, when and wherever they see it. However, these people who came, did not take away so much from India – not because there was no wisdom or knowledge to see, much of which is being discovered and visited even today. In fact, there was an abundance of knowledge, a small example being the science of the chakras of the human body. To plot the invisible energy pathways of the human body and creating a science on the source of energy within the human body, this incredible perception is timelessly relevant.

The others did not embrace our knowledge as they did not embrace our society. What they saw was the Eklavya and Karna principles in action – this inequality, the disrespect for merit and the zealous maintenance of caste as a privilege from parentage. Perhaps all this existed in their societies, too. There was nothing to take away as India’s greatness was hidden under such muck. This muck allowed the invaders to feel good about themselves and righteous while disrobing us.

India does not want this to be repeated. It does not want to conquer any other country with all its might. Instead, India and the rest of the countries should conquer the world with thoughts of art, science and love.

Redemption and resolution

In my view, some wounds are so deep that unless they are redeemed the soul does not find mukti, release or full expression. History and events merely take unending turns, but there is no real movement. It is just maya (illusion). I don’t subscribe to ‘moving on’ in all circumstances. Somebody bombs you, should you move on? Rapes you, should you move on? I think grief must be felt, absorbed, overcome and brought to justice. Then dusted off. The day India will admit to itself that it has lifted from its soul the injustice done to Eklavya and Karna, it will be a fresh start, like the stent that refills blood in a blocked artery. We cannot fathom the energy that will be unleashed from these ‘new sources’. It is like pranayama – the power of breath in the same body, producing up to 75 per cent more energy.

Historical wrongs, like murder, cannot always be undone but have to be corrected and/or brought to justice. The miracle of justice is both a primal yearning and a right. India’s story will begin after Eklavya and Karna are redeemed. Some work has begun on Eklavya’s front, but much is still left. It has been a case of missed opportunities in India: at the time of independence in 1947, with the first general elections in 1951-1952, Indira Gandhi’s grand victory in the general elections of 1971, Janata Party’s victory after Emergency in 1977, Indira Gandhi’s return to power in 1980 and the biggest parliamentary election victory after her assassination in 1984. We are well into another opportunity now. Or should we continue to create brand new ones? A lot has already been said about this opportunity not achieving its promise. It is in our interest that any elected leader fulfils his promise. We win far more than he does.

In the twenty-first century, we need to establish fairness of opportunity and the rule of law in the society. Till then neither ‘social equity’ nor ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘the north and south poles of balance’ can flourish. Society’s mukti or moksha lies in these to flourish. This is the runway, the social foundation of our journey.

2

Modern India and the personality ­driven subcontinent

It is not just the stories of ancient history, but let us look at the recent past, too. In India, 80 per cent of the discourse focuses on personalities or events, 19 per cent on episodic news and 1 per cent on fresh ideas. One can’t complete, let alone begin a conversation on change in India, without seeing the impact that personalities have had, and the faith people had in them. I have chosen those with long shadows and the one who is creating new ones.

My singular question is – how will India or any country be with leaders alone? Does a completely new leader mean we will achieve the change we are looking for? I am going to explore this. But here’s what I think: If you drive an Ambassador (poor choice) car today, that is how fast and well your journey can go. Even with a champion driver, it will go only so far. A choice of leader only means, ‘perhaps’ a champion is chosen to drive the car. I feel you and I can go faster by ourselves in a better car. I say, let us change the car, the structure. We need a structural change and not just the change of a leader if we wish to get out of the chakravyuh, the mind-numbing puzzle of concentric circles. We should aim to achieve the impossible by breaking the cycles of lousy governance and the indignity that comes with it. To this, as in high speed racing, you can add the champion driver, but for orderly traffic it is enough if you and I are well-trained and are driving good cars.

Quick lessons from history

Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Ambedkar, Indira – they were all great leaders. All of them took different measures in different times, and in different ways. But they failed to make the subcontinent take its place in the comity of nations: in development, in dignity, in spite of the large moves made by each one of them. Therefore, I doubt that the present leadership driving the same car may reach the same fate.

Mahatma Gandhi

In our rush to own the Mahatma as one great man, we often forget that there are at least two Gandhis – the moral Gandhi and the politician. He gave India and the world the recognition of moral force as a weapon to defeat empires. This was an important step after centuries of subjugation. Non-violence is not always the force that tips the balance. In a world ruled by war, where for over 2,000 years swords were used to spread religions, to introduce non-violence into the equation as a weapon was a path-breaking approach. Its transformative power is still beyond comprehension, particularly today. However, I don’t think that he (or non-violence) alone led India to independence, though it was his destiny, so far, to be perceived as having done so. The force of many energies, of many leaders and events played a crucial role in India’s independence. All this is not done by Gandhi. The use of statecraft to develop public thinking in a certain way is not new to India or the world.

Gandhi left a political legacy in India. I think it is fair for India and Indians to deal with his many layers. He was an active politician. This political legacy has cast a long shadow on Indian politics. We should come out of this shadow. Here are specific and damaging examples:

♦ Being an active politician as well, he could thus destroy his adversaries who otherwise had credible viewpoints by this visual identification. Smart people with their hearts in the right place and good ideas for the country got edged out of public life, for failing to conform or compete with his visual identity. Being normally dressed then, was not an option; it didn’t work in the face of the Gandhian dress strategy. India suffered a huge loss of talent that was suppressed, and poor talent that got in and got away because they dressed ‘right’. You can be in a loin cloth and be a cheat, or you could wear golden dresses and have a heart of gold. I have held this view since I started dreaming of India in 1983 and powerful questions struck me. Indians are, people are, capable of deeper appreciation of complex matters. The potential of a newly born nation imbued with the depth of an old civilisation was trivialised.

♦ Nomination culture in politics is another Gandhian shadow. It was his way or the highway. The practice of the concentration of power with the party bosses began with him. It led to the decline of merit in Indian democracy. The voices of CR Das, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Sardar Patel were thus muted, to India’s peril. Once you start with favourites, even credible ones, in time the practice of favouritism grows and credibility declines. This is not hindsight. These were well known truisms even then.

Sadly, some of those rooting for Sardar Patel today seem to create or ride on an anti-Nehru sentiment. Or make a symbol of Patel with an anti-dynasty emotion. Nehru had no role in this outcome of selection over Patel. It was Gandhi. He began the practice of anointment, which Sonia Gandhi topped . She did not do anything that did not have precedence. This approach of acting only in ways that you can defend by falling on precedence, this defensiveness has cost India the little innovation that existed in that system. It is time to rid ourselves of this dependence on precedence. Nehru did not defeat Patel, by means fair or foul. Nehru just happened to get selected. The same people, who criticise Nehru’s decision, do not touch Gandhi – they preserve him as a deity. But if you conduct a root-cause analysis of your unhappiness at Patel being denied the top job, you cannot be happy about Gandhi. They go together.

♦ Gandhi distanced himself from the outcomes he led. Leaders don’t make statements; they produce outcomes. ‘Dissolve Congress Party’ ought to have been done rather than said. His Hindu-Muslim brotherhood slogans further accentuated the differences in the subtext, rather than creating an overarching oneness and calm over a toxic situation. Sitting in a Muslim hut (his emphasis, not mine) is not the answer to an ongoing partition when millions are being uprooted, slain and raped. It is not the time for personal glory or distancing oneself from responsibility. Later, Nehru copied him by saying, ‘let’s hang all black marketers’, but under his watch and policies as a leader, they profiteered and proliferated. This is throwing sand in the eyes of trusting and innocent citizens. Gandhi has left us with a legacy of unaccountability of leadership – of ‘this is wrong, I am clean’.

Nathuram Godse shot him. His religion was branded as fanaticism, as we were then ushering in a new religion, which as with all conversions, needs negative branding of the existing structure. Mr Godse took a collective trigger to end policy isolation and exclusion from an unelected discourse.

Whatever your take, Godse’s family and his successors should not be seen as tainted. Between demands of a temple for Godse and decades of isolation which successive generations of his family have faced, there is a middle path as wide as India itself, which needs to be taken. In my view, Godse did not kill a person, he killed unilateralism. Nobody can agree with murder. Certainly not me, whose mother was murdered. What we must prevent is the daily murder of Gandhi to preserve the timeless greatness of Gandhi at his best.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru is a more complex personality. It is said, of the difference between the armies of India and Pakistan, that India is a country that has an army, but Pakistan’s army has a country. Nehru did not wish to be only a leader, but like the Pakistani army he wanted a country. You have to be brilliant and should have an asset bank of good in order to do this. But dig deeper: He kept the defence forces, India’s best institutions under its worst institution, the bureaucracy. This administrative injustice is the first thing I would like to correct in the present day and age. Even now no government has this issue on its agenda.

You can read about Nehru elsewhere. There is a lot of information available about him. Lesser known ones are the timidity with which he accepted the expulsion of long settled Indian communities without compensation from both Big China and Little Burma, or did not accept the Security Council’s seat and suggested China have it. This is not because he was sailing in unchartered waters and made errors. Bold initiatives that become errors are never to be counted, always to be encouraged and to be grateful for. In spite of the adequate good advice that he repeatedly received, and which he repeatedly steam-rolled or ignored, he only promoted his policies at the expense of India and its many other heroes. There were various options for growth, more bang for the buck, which he scuttled for personal ideology, worse, with his irritability towards contrary wisdom. He did not achieve much economically or in terms of social equity. The ground reality for the poor was: no independence.

He wanted to be a political giant, nationally and internationally. Nothing is black and white. India was not the only country coming out of the woods, given the song and dance he made of his achievements. If he had looked over his shoulder, there were quieter and better stories all around, even then.

Architecture defines the society of a particular ethos. Nehru was surrounded and influenced through travel by beautiful architecture. Yet his gift to India as the public works architecture is fit to be brought down. Even if the debris result in ecological damage, the continuance of these structures and what they stand for are causing far more damage to the spirit of the future.

Life is a balance sheet of assets and liabilities, leading to a net worth or an opposite negative worth. Even bankrupt companies have assets. Nehru had assets, but his net worth to India was minimal. Most examples of good for India were also examples without consistency. They were built to project his image. The Bhakra Nangal Dam, for instance, was his finest stroke. Nehru knew his bureaucracy could not do it. He invited, without fuss or tender, Mr. M. Harvey Slocum, an American architect to build the dam. He committed the project to the expert. Slocum could order work by signing off on the back of his visiting card! This was Nehru at his best.

The engineers who were trained by Slocum to build dams left the country after the construction was over. Their services were not required in their country. These experts went away to the US and other countries, disappointed and dejected (subservience to a Planning Commission among other reasons) after producing the finest work in the early years of India’s independence. This was the beginning of brain drain. Similarly, when he created the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (I use lesser-known examples) he refused to link it with the production system that he was creating in the country, or to the established universities. Our research-to-production ratio is therefore, miserable. He was forewarned a million times.

Nehru appointed himself as Chairman of all Arts, Literature and Science, besides handling minor matters like nation-building and Prime Minister-ship. All these areas were with the Government of India, so that they could be under him. This is the respect he had for India and the respect with which he paid back was the respect he got. The reason why these structures are still functioning is not because they are durable, far from it, they remain in existence due to apathy. At best, he was more imaginative. The reality in terms of rural, feudal, even the fairness at elections or lack of it, was miserable in his times. He failed to make efficient use of capital or competitive industry to change the ground reality for millions of the citizens of this country. I don’t want to get into the State control over entrepreneurship issues, where he was both choiceless and economically- ideologically driven. We didn’t make a pin or a plane in his tenure. So, I don’t want to focus in hindsight of voyages in unchartered waters. I would rather like to focus on his disregard for entrepreneurships, profit (cost plus can be more than price with profit and can exclude all application of mind and innovation) and the lack of balance in allocation of money between heavy, medium and small enterprises or new and traditional strengths– a situation unaddressed till today. I believe that India had vast cultural industry then, which was ignored in the economic policies of the day. The industry needed a force that could harness its energy, but it got a short end of the stick. The creative nation that was full of ingenuity was reduced to a commodity market.

Unlike Jinnah, who dwells on partition in his 1947 speech and tries to make amends by offering a plural society, at least for the record, Nehru does not even refer to partition in his Independence Day speech.

Hope for the future, a sense of celebration and optimism is good, but the absence of any mention of such a major, bitter reality unfolding in real time, leads me to conclude that Nehru failed early with reality and people as the focus. Therefore, I differ with the State-fed or truly popular perception that the ‘tryst with destiny’ speech, is as great, as it is made out to be.

Moving on to his democratic talents. Dig deeper and you will see bonsai plants and huge contradictions. He did not wish to fall in the eyes of international fora and so did not become a formidable dictator. His actions led to democratic progress, but only in form and very limited in nature as we will see in the petitions later in the book. His rationality? See the ‘Hindu’ Marriage Act and other societal control laws. His openness? See the censorship laws he enacted in 1952. His economic vision? See the shortages and profiteering based economic policies in the society he sanctified by law. For all his vast talents, he would always put his ideology before the good of the people, thinking that he was the people. Admittedly, you need great charisma to do so.

Nehru doesn’t add up.

BHIMRAO AMBEDKAR

Ambedkar is the other Indian I would like to talk about here – who shaped India – without being popularly elected as Head of State.

Over time, the legacies of Gandhi, Nehru, and Indira and indeed of Jinnah, who has also shaped the Indian subcontinent are becoming troubled legacies. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Sardar Patel were robbed by destiny, or perhaps blessed by destiny (as many great people are). They were removed from the public sphere at the highest peak of their careers. I feel it is a blessing for anyone to die at the height of his career. The curtains over their greatness are slowly lifting.

One name that has struck a chord with the people of this country even after his death is, BR Ambedkar. In the seventies you didn’t hear much of him in the marketplace nor were there occasions and holidays celebrated in his honour. In the eighties it was feeble. In the nineties it was pronounced. In this century, he is all over the place and rising.

Has this got to do with Dalit (underprivileged caste) politics? Maybe, but it is much more than that. Is he the father of our constitution, as is popularly said? In my view, he is one advocate of some of the best parts of the constitution, the part which gives us the guarantee of equality. Unfortunately, the words of the constitution are too many and the reality on the ground, on governance, is different. He is not the father of that reality or of the lack of a good and adequate governance structure in the constitution. They call him Father, in part, to keep the self-serving parts of the constitution intact, besides other objectives, like appeasement and tokenism. I also think it is unfair to not give due or take away due credit or discredit others in the Constituent Assembly. Like independence, which was not just about Gandhi, the making of the constitution too was a relay race of team work.

The man, Ambedkar, grew in stature after his death because he was before his time and challenged the timeless – untouchability. He linked caste practices to the dominant religion and first tried as a Hindu to do so. The society of the time did not yield. This was to be expected, but it disappointed him deeply. Next, he flirted with Islam. He was not satisfied. Then he chose a religion born in India – Buddhism. Now it is very funny that Hindus see Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu, as Krishna is. In Hinduism, you have 330 million options to choose your path from. Buddha is one of them. These unitary characterisations of God came later. (Osho believes many copied Buddha). So, Ambedkar’s opting out of the caste system, ultimately became opting out of Hinduism or embracing Buddhism, whichever way you put it. I believe he lost traction in doing so. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela fought equally huge righteous battles of racial equality, as Ambedkar did, but they did not equate their battles with the religion of their opponents.

The struggles of slaves and the Black vs White struggles in America were not less than the struggle of untouchability. The Blacks were not even native Christians. Yet they worshipped in black churches and somehow the equally poignant, unjust, black vs white struggle, did not become a struggle against Christ. The Church was not punished for being voiceless during the Holocaust. There are millions of examples, for fault lines of societies have rendered untold atrocities, timelessly.

Societal wrong is often cloaked in religion for legitimacy, but it is not religion. Also, it is hard to make societal wrong yield easily. Minor ants like us who have tried to make a mark in the world do so by breaking glass ceilings. All the pioneers of equity or any achievers in any field will tell you that the struggle to change the paradigm is tough. So, imagine if you are trying to bring in equity in a society that has been living with a prejudice cloaked in religion for legitimacy for millions of years.

I too, as a Hindu, as we are called (wherein actually it was a term for all of us living on this side of the Hindu Kush mountains) have asked for the redemption of the soul of Eklavya and Karna. This spiritual cleansing is a prerequisite to progress – a blanket ban on caste system, not just in social life but as enshrined in the bureaucracy, which is enshrined in the constitution. Later in the book, I have asked for your consideration of making societal progress as goals greater than self-realisation and the freedom from rebirth. These thoughts of mine are not tenets of Hinduism. Yet I am a Hindu. I have not equated it with how and to who I pray. These are private matters and I pray daily.

Ambedkar emerged as a pioneer and social architect in the truest way and sense. In hindsight, we can see his cause and not his tools. Tools are circumstantial and contextual. As much as he is timeless, he was (as we all are) a product of his time. He was in manthan – a state of churning. He undertook a very big journey. He tried to demolish seemingly impossible mountains. His mission, vision, tadap (pining