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India can become the spiritual leader of the world,if only its own people will allow -
06-13-2004, 04:05 AM
Cry O my beloved India!
Francois Gautier
June 07, 2004
I have lived for 35 years in India. I can say without boasting that
I am one of the few Western journalists who believe in India,
believe in the greatness of this country, believe that India is on
the way to becoming a superpower, industrial, economic, social,
military, and above all spiritual.
Throughout my professional career, both as a journalist and a
writer, I have tried not to dwell too much on the negative, the
superficial, the anecdotic, and the folkloric that most of my peers
are affectionate to when reporting on India. On the contrary, I have
strived to the best of my ability to change the image of poverty, of
corruption, of untouchability, of the City of Joy and Mother Teresa,
which is hanging on India's neck since the British, the Christian
missionaries, and, later, the Marxists fashioned it.
It has cost me dearly. I have had trouble with all the newspapers I
have worked for and been bitterly attacked by most of the French
India specialists who think I am a right-wing Hindu fanatic and anti-
Muslim, though the only thing I have ever said is that the greatness
of India lies in its Hindu ethos -- the eternal spirituality beyond
religion, which has influenced even India's minorities -- and that
there is a serious problem with Islam in South Asia.
Today I feel sad. By voting out a government that, whatever its
faults, had given back to India some pride, some stability, some
recognition in the world, I feel Indians do not really know what
they want. As usual, it is not about the people, but the system.
There are good people in the Congress, but a party which was founded
by a Briton (A O Hume) for the British has had throughout its
history some craving for Western rule, as symbolised today by this
irrational hankering of so many Congress leaders and a greater part
of the Indian intelligentsia for an Italian Christian to rule them.
No doubt, the new government has some very good people, but it also
boasts of many members who have only their selfish interests at
heart and will pull India down without thinking for a second of the
harm they are doing to their country.
Everybody is raving about coalitions nowadays. But only people who
wish India ill can wish for a coalition government. What happens in
a coalition such as the one we see today? A weak government where
everybody is pulling to his or her side, where there is no single,
united aspiration for the good of one's country, no rallying point
of common programmes.
What India needs now is a strong, united government, which can
muster enough popular support and votes in Parliament so as to
initiate the changes that this country so badly needs: a common
civil code, a presidential system, a reform of the judicial network,
an Indianised education curriculum, where you learn about India's
past greatness, about Ayurveda and Vedic mathematics and the science
of pranayama and the history of its proud kings and the art of
meditation.
The BJP government has fallen. You are exulting, O Christians! You
seem to forget how much this country gave you: the first Christian
community in the world, that of the Syrian Christians, was
established in Kerala in the 1st century. It was welcomed by the
local Hindus and Christians there were always allowed to practise
their religion in peace, at a time when other Christians were
persecuted all over the world. Indeed, it is the Portuguese of Vasco
da Gama and Albuquerque who clamped down on the syncretic, all-
inclusive Christianity that had evolved in Kerala, thereby splitting
the Syrian Church in two.
The BJP government has fallen. You are rejoicing, O Muslims! You
seem to forget that Arab merchants came to Hindu India long before
the first Muslim invasions of the 7th century. They were also
welcomed and allowed to practise their religion in peace and to
trade as they liked.
Islam has flourished in India in a way that it has not flourished
anywhere else: you have a Muslim President now and Muslims are free
to practise and preach. Do Muslims in India think Hindus could have
one of their own as president of Pakistan, or king of Saudi Arabia?
No way! They can't even practise their faith openly there! And are
you also forgetting that the BJP government made so many efforts to
reach out to you and prove that they loved you too?
The BJP government has fallen. You are rejoicing, O Marxists! But do
you understand that Marxism is dead all over the world; and that
even in China it is Marxism in name only, as its government actually
implements capitalist policies? In India you have been free to
practise Marxism as you wish and have democratically governed two
states for decades. Even more, Marxism here is an Indianised brand
of Marxism, often with a human face, that was baldly missing in the
Soviet Union or China. Don't you have any gratefulness to the Hindu
ethos for that? Are not most of your converts Hindus themselves, who
practise Marxism with a zeal unknown in the world today?
The BJP government has fallen. Your are rejoicing, O members of the
Indian intelligentsia! You think that reading the latest New York
Times bestseller, speaking polished English, and putting down your
own countrymen, specially anybody who has a Hindu connection, makes
you an intellectual. But in the process you have not only lost your
roots, you have turned your back on a culture and civilisation that
is thousands of years old and has given so much to the world. Your
are forgetting what a privilege it is to be born an Indian -- and a
Hindu at that -- inheritors of a spirituality that accepts that God
manifests Himself under different names, at different times, when
today the world's two biggest monotheistic religions still think
their God is the only true one and it is their duty to convert
everybody by guile or force.
Maybe Indians need to go through this painful process, maybe they
need to be faced with a government that will show its selfish and
ineffective face openly, maybe they need to experience the confusion
and greed of their politicians with full force, before they realise
that they had a good government going before that, one that brought
stability and pride to India, not one that pulls India down just to
please the minorities, the Vatican, and the Western powers who do
not want India to emerge as a strong and independent nation.
But in the process, India's economy is going to suffer. It has
already lost thousands of crores in stockmarket crashes. India's
image will again go down in the eyes of the world. India's foreign
affairs will go haywire, with such useless policies as getting close
to Palestine in vogue again. And India will get a little more
divided along caste, ethnicity, and religion, thanks to those who
are now in power in Delhi.
At the moment, there are forces at work to destroy India, not by
dropping a nuclear bomb on it, but simply by pitting one against the
other, by blindly copying the fads, failures, and excesses of the
West, by siding with forces that are inimical to India, by attacking
from all sides its ancient spirituality.
For the greatness of India is spiritual. The world has lost the
truth. We have lost the Great Sense, the meaning of our evolution,
the meaning of why so much suffering, why dying, why getting born,
why this earth, who we are, what is the soul, what is reincarnation,
where is the ultimate truth about the world, the universe... But
India has kept this truth. India has preserved it through seven
millennia of pitfalls, genocides, and mistakes. And this was meant
to be India's gift to this planet in this century: to restore to the
world its true sense, to recharge humanity with the real meaning and
spirit of life. India can become the spiritual leader of the world,
if only its own people will allow it.
Today I feel sad. Sad for India, sad for the world. For India is in
mortal danger, its eternal sanatana dharma is under threat from its
own people. And if India dies spiritually, the world will die also.
India is the last chance for the world to avoid pralaya, self-
destruction.
Cry O my beloved India, look what thy children have done to thee!
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