The Intellectual Scene in Post Independent India

[Guest guest]

Text of a talk delivered by Shri S. Gurumurthy at IIT Madras, 17/6/2003. (sorry

for a long mail but it is a super piece).

A criticial evaluation of strengths & weaknesses.

 

http://www.vijayv.org/wwwvijayvorg/Articles/IntScenePostIndIndia.php

 

.... Defeat and anger go together. Abuse and defeat go together. So, it is in

this norm and with this understanding of what an intellectual debate means, I

would like to place before you some of my thoughts today. Some of may find it

provocative. I am confident that the audience is competent enough to absorb

this and think rather than get into the mood which all of us have got used to

in the last 30-40 years abuse. Background: India before Independence Let us see

the pre-independence background, the intellectual content of India. See the kind

of personalities who led the Indian mind Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo,

Gandhiji, Tilak- giants in their own way. Most of them were involved in

politics, active politics, day-to-day politics, handling men, walking on the

road, addressing meetings, solving problems between their followers. And,

meeting the challenges posed by the enemy, the conspiracies hatched against

them. They were handling everything, yet, they were maintaining an intellectual

supremacy, and a record and an originality which history has recorded. Let us

look at the academic side. Whether it is a P. C. Ray who wrote on Indian

Chemistry in 1905 or Sir C. V. Raman who wrote about mridangam, tabala, and

violin, and saw the Physics in it (this was in 1913); whether it was R. C.

Majumdar or Radhakumud Mukherjee who saw greatness in the Indian Civilization;

trying to bring up points, instances, historical evidence to mirror the

greatness of India, to the defeated Indian race, they were all building the

Indian mind brick by brick. Sri Aurobindo spoke of Sanatana Dharma as the

Nationalism of India. He didn"t rank it as a philosophy. He brought it down to

the level of emotional consciousness. Swami Vivekananda spoke of spiritual

nationalism; it was the same Swami who spoke of Universal brotherhood. For them

philosophy was not removed from the ground reality. The nation was at the core

of their philosophy. Swami Vivekananda was called the "patriot monk". Mahatma

Gandhi spoke of Rama Rajya. Bankim Chandra wrote Bande Maataram. The song, the

slogans in it, the mantra in it made hundreds of people kiss the gallows

smilingly and many others went to jail. It transformed the life of the people;

this was the intellectual scene, this was the content. This is what powered the

intellectual as well as the mass movement in India. This was the core of India,

the soul of the Indian freedom movement. The symptoms: India immediately after

Independence Imagine what happened in 1947 and after, India was able to

intellectually lead not only Indians but also the whole world because of the

intellectual assertion that the freedom movement brought about. Let us look at

post Independence India. The persons who led post-Independence India were also

trained in the same freedom movement. They went to jail, but they were not

rooted in the intellectual content of the Freedom movement! The first Prime

Minister of India, he was in jail for 7 years. He was a great intellectual

himself, purely in the sense of his capacity to reason, understand, read, and

expound a thought. He told Galbrieth once, "I would be regarded as the last

English Prime Minister of India. See the intellectual capability of the man,

the enormously competent mind. But intellectualism doesn"t exist in a vacuum.

It has to be rooted in something concrete. Vivekananda"s universal brotherhood

was rooted in India"s greatness as a civilization, which proclaimed it. The

concept of "Vasudaiva Kutumbakam" cannot exist without a living form, a

population which believes in it and believes in itself. You need to have a

society, which believes in it. That is why India could invite the Jews who were

butchered, raped, all over the world. In 107 out of 108 countries, this race was

butchered. At least they had the courtesy and the gratitude to publish a book,

the Israeli govt. published a book that out of 108 countries that we sought

refuge, the only civilization, the only country, the only people, the only

ideology that gave us refuge was the Indian civilization. They published a

book, which most Indians are unaware of. And we invited the Muslims. The

refugee Muslims first landed in Kutch. And they are called the Kutchy Memons

even today but not the Memons who bomb Bombay. But the Memons who lived with

us. In the year 1917, many of you might be aware, a case went to the Preview

Council, equivalent to the Supreme Court now. The Kutchy Memons went and told

the Preview Council that we are Muslims in name, but we follow only the Hindu

law. Please don"t impose the Shariyat on us. The Preview Council ruled that

they are Muslims but the only sacred book they have is called "Dasaavathaara",

it is not Koran. In fact they knew no language other than the Kutchy language.

And in the "Dasaavathaara", nine were common between Hindus and Kutchy Memons.

We call the tenth avathaara "Kalki" and they call him "Ali". The Preview

Council ruled that the Shariyat law is not applicable to them. The All India

Muslim League took up the case, went to the British and told them that this

finding is dangerous to Islam and requested them to pass a law which will

overrule this judgement; the British Govt. passed the law in 1923, called the

"The Kutchy Memons Act" which declared, " If a Kutchy Memon wants to follow the

Shariyat, allow him to do so". Please understand. It doesn"t mean a Muslim must

follow the Shariyat. Between 1923-1937, before the All India Shariyat(AIS) Act

was passed, not a single Kutchy Memon filed an affidavit with the plea that he

wants to follow the Shariyat. That was the integration prevalent in India. In

1937, when the AIS Act was passed, the preamble to the act mentioned that this

was being passed by a demand made by the AIML leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Today, the Shariyat has become a part of Muslim consciousness. The purpose

behind making you aware of this background is that 99% of the people who speak

about the constitutional rights of the minorities or the distinctiveness of

Muslim life are unaware of the ground level facts. Till the year 1980, in Kuch

Bihar district, the Shariyat law was not applicable. In 32 instances between

1923 and 1947 by legislation, the Shariyat law was not applicable to the

Muslims. This is the extent of the intellectual gap in India. Secularism: A

Reversal and perversion of the Indian mind. And now, coming to what the

position is today. Everything that drove the freedom movement- everything that

constituted the soul of the Freedom movement, whether it is the Raamaraajya of

Gandhiji or Sanaatana Dharma as Nationalism of Sri Aurobindo or the spiritual

patriotism of Vivekananda or the soul stirring Vande Maataram song, came to be

regarded not only as unsecular but as sectarian, communal and even as something

harmful to the country. Thus, there was a reversal, a perversion of the Indian

mind. How did it occur? Today, the intellectualism of India means to denigrate

India. There are mobile citizens and there are non- citizens deriding India, go

to the Indian Airlines counter, you will find people deriding India. Go to the

post office, they will deride India. Go to the railway station, they will

deride India. It is the English educated Indians" privilege to deride India.

When I was talking to an audience of Postal employees in Madras, in the GPO (a

majority of them who heard me were women). I told them the basic facts about

the Post Office. I said it is one of the most efficient postal systems in the

world, one of the cheapest in the world, one of the most delivery perfect

postal systems in the world. For one rupee, you are able to transport

information from one end of the country to the other. And you have a postman,

no where in the world this happens the postman goes to the illiterate mother

and reads out the letter, he is asked to sit there and shares a cup of coffee

and comes away. M. O. s are delivered to the last paisa. It is an amazing

system, one of the largest postal systems linking one of the most populous

nations, one of the most complicated nations with so many languages. Somebody

writes the address in Tamil and it gets delivered in Patna! It gets delivered

to the Jawaan at warfront! When I completed my speech many of the women were

wiping their tears. I asked why are you crying, I have only praised you. They

said, "Sir, this is the first time we"ve been praised, otherwise we"ve only

been abused!" You know how many people the Railway transports in India? A

million people which is equivalent to the population of Australia! And we have

only abuses for them! Have we any ideas of what this country is? The best in

India have compared our country with Singapore, HongKong, Korea, Japan and

Taiwan. You can walk across many of these countries in one night (laughs)! The

best politicians, intellectuals, sociologists in India have compared us with

them, because, we have never understood what we are and unless you do that, you

can never relate us with others. Demonising India: Projecting a negative image.

This enormous intellectual failure, to the extent of being intellectually

bankrupt, did not occur over night, it was no accident. There is a history

behind this enormous erosion. And I told you about these mobile citizens, what

they have done to us. Every country has problems. There is no country without

any problem. Are you aware of what is one of the most pressing problems in

America today? It is incurable according to the American sociologists; even

American economists have begun to agree with them. American politicians are

shaken, one third of the pregnant women are school going children. And mothers

mix the anti-pregnancy pill in the food without her knowledge everyday. But

this is not the image of America. The image of America is a technologically

advanced country etc. etc. Ours is the only country where the mobile citizens

of India have transformed the problems of India into the image of India-its

identity. Go to any country and the same negative stereotype is echoed that

India is suffering from poverty and malnutrition. India has no drinking water.

Indian women are all burnt. If they are married, they are burnt, if they are

widows, they are burnt. See the image that has been built about this country.

Who did this? The English educated Indian. And one Kaluraam Meena (have you

ever heard of him? Asks the audience to raise their hands if they have), only a

small fraction of this large audience has heard of him. When Clinton came to

India, he went to a village called Nayla where the villagers interacted with

him. And one of the Panchayat board members asked him, "Sir, I am told that in

the West, all of you believe that this country is a rotten country, a backward

country, a poor, hungry country. Do you also think like that?" Clinton was

shaken, because he might have thought that this person might be approaching him

for some favour. This is the image of India. I will relate my experience when I

went to the Carter Centre in 1993. They were talking about dispute resolution

and all that. I went there to meet somebody, if not Carter, somebody else at

least. His Deputy, a lady, was very hesitant to receive me. "Mr. Gurumurthy",

she said, "Mr. Carter is not around, anyway, I can spare seven-eight minutes

for you." I said three or four minutes of your time would do. Even before I

could start, she said, "Mr. Gurumurthy, we don"t have funds, we will not be

able to help" (laughter from the audience). I replied, "Let us assume you have

a hundred billion dollars, how much will you give me? One billion? One

million?" She kept quiet, "I don"t need your money. I came here to discuss

whether community living is an answer to disputes. I have come to discuss this

because you have suggested electoral means to resolve problems in communities

which have no damn idea of what an election is; whether community living is an

answer because you don"t what that means. She sat and discussed this with me

for two hours. This is the image we have projected that anybody, who comes from

India, comes to beg. Ordinary Indians did not create this impression; educated

Indians created it. This is the work of civil servants, NGOs. Christian

missionaries during the freedom movement created this. Indians are filthy,

rotten, dirty and unhealthy, advertising abroad these are the people who need

to be saved. We have to Christianise them, enlighten them, and give us money. I

can understand that because it is their business. But what did we do after 1947?

We repeated the same mistakes. We projected India as a country of unending

problems. As I said, every country has problems. Only in India, problems become

identities. How many dowry deaths take place in India in a year? Yet, India is

projected as a country burning its own daughter-in-laws. And we also talk about

it. Every damn newspaper will be writing about it. We believe in

self-deprecation. And this goes on in the guise of intellectualism in India.

And one woman, she attempted to take a film of the widows. I wrote an article,

asking her to go to Lijjat Paapad. A widow brought me up. Millions of widows

have worked to bring up their children. It is a nation, which believes in

Tapasya. You may not believe in it but you are an exception. Compare Deepa

Mehta"s attitude with Sarada Maa"s who was the wife, who became a widow after

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa"s passing away. She went to the very same place

where Deepa Mehta went and saw the widows She said, "These widows are so pure,

they are an illustration and an example to me." Deepa Mehta saw them as

prostitutes. The widows have already been hurt once. Why are you sprinkling

salt on their wounds? I am very sorry to speak about this, but I have to, this

audience is enlightened enough to understand me. Indian women are sexually

unsatisfied and so they are becoming lesbians? This is one bloody story against

us, about us. This is the image of Indian men and women, and this film is in

English. Catherine Mayo wrote a book and Mahatma Gandhi said about it, " I have

no time to read this filth. But I am under a compulsion, under pressure because

this has been published abroad. The image of India has been rubbished and I

have to counter it. With this introduction, he wrote about the book and said

that this woman is a gutter inspector (laughs). The intellectualism in India is

gutter inspection- people are of this kind etc. Understand the level of erosion.

Indian Politics: Weaknesses and Pitfalls Let us look at the post independence

scenario from the macro level. We installed a system of governance and it

postulated all the important goals for the Indian society and polity, which was

gulped by the Indian academia, by the Indian intellectuals. We will have a

classless society through socialism. We will have a casteless society through

equality. We will have a faithless society through secularism. We will have a

modern society devoid of tradition. Instead of politics restructuring caste,

caste has restructured politics today. Political parties are talking only in

terms of castes. Has any Indian intellectual come to terms with caste? You must

understand caste if you want to handle the Indian society. You cannot say that I

want to have a very different kind of society. You have to handle the Indian

sentiment, the Indian tradition, Indian beliefs. You can't clone a society of

your choice in India. Social engineering has failed everywhere; the masters of

social engineering have given up the communists- whether it is sociologists or

economists you have to accept a society as it is. You can only increase the

momentum of evolution in the society; you can't forcibly bring about a

revolution today. But, Indian leaders and intellectuals, till today, keep

abusing caste. They don"t know how to handle caste. Let me narrate to you how a

community in Karaikudi handled this issue. The Chettiyar community assembled top

businessmen, professionals from all over the world for 3 days to discuss their

culinary act, how to construct houses, what languages they use, what old adages

and stories their grand parents used to tell, what clothes they used to wear;

not one word of politics, mind you. This was not even published in the

newspapers. Intellectuals were not even aware of it. So, caste is a very

important instrument in India, you may not like it. Unfortunately, every

intellectual leads a caste life inside, but outside he is casteless! He is

cloning an approach outside. There is no intellectual honesty at all. And what

happened in the case of secularism? In India, any one who is not a Hindu is per

se secular. In the year 1957, just 10 years had passed after the Muslim League

demanded and got the country partitioned, the leader who voted for the

resolution for the partition of India was Quazi Millath Ismail, (who was

leading the same Muslim League on the Indian side), the Congress certified that

the Muslim League in Kerala is secular and hence it can associate with them. The

Muslim League outside Kerala is communal with the same President! Three hundred

and fifty crores are spent today for the Haj pilgrims out of the funds of

secular India every year. No one can raise an objection. At least I can

understand why politicians don't want to do that because they want the Muslim

votes. But, what about the intelligentsia. What about newspaper editors and

journalists? And academicians? None of them speak out. The reason is that we

have produced a state dependent intellectualism in India. We don"t produce

Nakkeerans anymore, our intellectualism is a derivative of the State and the

State is a derivative of the polity. And in turn the polity is a derivative of

the mind of Macaulay and Marx. The Indian education system: A Legacy of

Macaulay. This Macaulayian system of education is a poison injected into our

system. At least I had the opportunity of schooling in Tamil and hence could

withstand the corruption that this English education brings with it. This

corruption begins the moment the child steps out of the house. He is told to

converse in English at home. This did not happen even in pre-Independence

India, even when Macaulay wrote that notorious note sitting in Ooty. How many

of you know Macaulay"s formulation? Just those two or three sentences at least

which form the crux " We require an education system in India which will

produce a class of interpreters, who will be Indian in colour and Englishmen in

taste, opinions and morals." This is the education system, which we have been

continuing with, which was earlier conceived to produce clerks for the British

empire. If you have to differ from an English educated person you have to

differ only through the English language. If you have to abuse somebody, even

that has to be done in English! If you abuse the Anglicised Indian, he will not

find fault with the blame but with the grammar in your language! This is the

extent to which a foreign language has possessed us. But, we must master

English, that is needed, but why do we have to become slaves of the English

language? We must use that language as a tool, but why do we consider it as a

status symbol? This is the influence of Macaulay. If you want to understand the

Macaulay/Marxist mix in India, you have to go a little back to see how Marxism

grew out of the Christian civilisation. I recommend that you read the Nov

27,1999 edition of the Newsweek, which describes how the Christian idea of the

end of time called the "apocalypse", influenced the entire history, art, music,

prognosis, sociology, economics, and the entire attitude of the Christian

civilisation towards the non-Christian civilisations. A Christian scholar who

describes how Communism grew out of Christianity has written it. In 1624, Anna

Baptists, a group of Christians who believed in the basic tenets of

Christianity seized power in a particular place, banned private property and

use of any book other than the Bible. When Marxism came up later through the

exposition of Das Capital, the Marxists began expounding their doctrine as an

extension of Christianity. The thesis, antithesis and synthesis of making

Christianity acceptable to the age of enlightenment was the Hegelian way

demanded rationalisation of Christianity in the days of the Protestant

movement. Hegel began with a disagreement, then started interacting with

Christianity and ultimately ended up accepting Christianity. You can see the

same phenomenon with Marxist postulates- "capitalism is my enemy, we have to

deal with capitalism" and finally we have to find a synthesis with capitalism".

Marx on India In fact in the year 1857, Marx wrote about India, " India was a

prosperous civilisation. It had a very high standard of living. Their

productivity was higher. India was an economic giant." It was so. If you look

at the statistics in 1820, India"s share of world production was 19%, and

England"s share was 9%, please note that Britain was deep into the industrial

revolution at that time. 18% of the world trade was in Indian hands at that

time whereas 8% was the figure for Britain and 1% for US. When 80% of the

American population was engaged in agriculture, India had 60% of the population

engaged in non-agricultural occupations. This is supposed to be an index of

development. All these statistics can be found in Paul S. Kennedy"s "Rise and

fall of great powers". So, Marx says, "This was a great civilisation which had

produced prosperous communities." A prosperity which went deep into the

villages. In the early stages, when the East India Company came and went to

Murshidabad, an unknown name today in Bengal, a district level town, the

Britishers were awe struck with its prosperity and wrote that it was more

prosperous than London. This is no more disputed anyway, even by Indian

intellectuals. Marx acknowledges the fact that this was a prosperous country

and also had equality but unfortunately, he says for 2000 years the society did

not change nor did it allow any revolutionary forces to enter! In his worldview

human beings cannot progress without a revolution! In the two articles on

British rule in India and the East India Company- history and results written

by Marx, quoted in the New York daily, Karl Marx does grant though somewhat in

a grudging manner that "materially, India was fairly industrious and prosperous

even before the onset of the British rule. He said that India was an exporting

country till 1830. and started importing because it had opened its trade to the

British. Many of you may not be aware that the kings in India had no right to

over the lands, which came under the jurisdiction of any panchayat. Whether it

was Emperor Ashoka or Bhagavan Sri Ramachandra, the rule was the same. It was

changed only during the British rule under the Ryotwari system, even the

Mughals could not change it. It was also found that family communities were

based on domestic industry, with the peculiar combination of hand-spinning,

hand- weaving, agriculture etc. which gave them a supporting power. The misery

inflicted by the British on Hindusthan is of an entirely different kind and

infinitely more intense than what it had to suffer before civil wars,

invasions, revolutions, conquests, famines all these did not go deeper than the

surface. But, England broke the entire framework of Hindusthan, the symptoms of

reconstitution are yet to emerge clearly. This loss of the Old World without

the emergence of a new order imparts a particular melancholy to the present

misery of Hindus and Hindusthan. Marx goes on to say that the British

interference destroyed the union between agriculture and the manufacturing

industry. Suddenly he remarks that the English interference dissolved this semi

barbarian, semi-civilised community. He concedes that they were prosperous, that

they organised their affairs well, they have a measure of independence, they

have a democracy at the lowest level, all this has been conceded. Then, how

does he classify us as "semi-barbarian and semi-civilised communities"? He

notes that India"s social condition remained unaltered since remote antiquity.

This is important, for him revolution is the core, the soul and centre of the

society. This society never had a revolution; hence it cannot be modern! There

is an underlying assumption, which considers revolution as a pre- requisite for

being modern. Hence, he feels that the destruction wrought by the British is the

inevitable revolution needed for the development of the Indian society. England

had vested interests, violent interests in bringing about this "revolution".

But, the question in focus is whether mankind can fulfill its destiny without a

fundamental revolution in the social state? Whatever might have been the crimes

of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about a

revolution, "whatever bitterness the spectacle of crumbling of an ancient world

may evoke, from the point of history, we have to exclaim, "should this torture

torment us? Since it brings us great pleasure, were not the rule of Taimur,

souls delivered without measure?" It is a creative destruction in the cause of

revolution according to him. If you see Indian communism which was expounded by

a man called Rajane Palme Dutt. Has anyone heard of his name? (two persons from

the audience raised their hands). Two. He was born of a white woman and an

Indian father in England. He was in charge of Indian communism for 25 years. He

never came to India though. In his book, "India Today", he laid down the

framework, the policy for Indian communists, what must be done, what is the

kind of revolution needed in India, the development model etc. In those days,

even good photographs of India were not available, yet this man spoke about

India sitting in London. He came to India for the first time in 1946, ten years

after he wrote this book and realised that he had to revise it. He stayed for 30

days! A visitor to India was the father of Indian Communism! And from that day

till date, the Indian Communist has never been with India. Not only that, they

took over the Indian mind in the post- independence period. It is these

Marxist/Macaulayist intellectuals who will certify whether somebody is modern

or traditional, backward or secular or communal, progressive or regressive.

They were running an Open Air University issuing certificates every day through

the press. They have branded me as a communal man. Labels: Tools for stultifying

important debates Labels substituted debate in India. Simply a label- communal,

that is enough. Four or five editorials will appear preaching that Gurumurthy

is communal and the matter must end there. No one would even discuss what

communalism is! Religious fundamentalism, RSS/Bajrang Dal fundamentalism!

Anyone, who exposes the Hindu cause I India is a fundamentalist! We have seen

this term being used so casually and superfluously and incessantly by

politicians and newspapers. Has anyone bothered to understand the meaning of

religious fundamentalism going beyond these slogans? Secularism is an

intra-Christian phenomenon. It has no application outside Christianity at all.

Secularism resolved the fight between two powerful persons, the King and the

Archbishop who were loyal to the same faith, to the same prophet, to the same

book and to the same Church. It is not a multireligious virtue. A

multireligious idea, a multireligious living, a multireligious culture, a

multireligious fabric or a multi religious structure was unknown outside India.

There was usually only one faith and no place for any other, not even for a

variation of the same faith.Fifty six thousand Bahais were butchered in one

hour in Tehran! They believed in the same Koran, in the same Muhammad, the only

difference was that they said that Muhammad might come in another form again.

That was their only fault and they were all butchered. But we have no such

problem. We can play with God, we can abuse God, and we can beat God! If I say

that monotheistic religions have had a violent history, and the reply will be

"you are communal." But this is exactly the same conclusion that a study in

Chicago revealed, probably, the only study on fundamentalism conducted by

anybody so far. This fundamentalism project brought out five volumes each

volume about eight hundred to nine hundred pages. The conclusion they have

reached is that, "Fundamentalism is a virtue of Abrahamic religions. It is not

applicable to eastern faiths at all. What about the Indian intellectuals? Day

in and day out, they keep abusing us as fundamentalists, communalists, that we

are anti-secular and it is being gulped down by everyone including those from

the IITs and IIMs, lawyers and police officials, journalists and politicians.

Look at this intellectual bankruptcy. An inner revolution: The much needed

change We need a mental revolution, an inner revolution; we need to get rooted

in our own soul. There is a missing element in India today and it is this. That

element has to be restored otherwise Indian intellectualism will only be a

carbon copy of Western intellectualism. We are borrowing not only their

language and idiom but we trying to copy the very soul of the West. So, all

that we need to do is - it is impossible to share the entire depth of the

subject in one evening"s lecture programme. I have only tried out point out in

an incoherent way, how a completely fresh mindset has to be evolved. And unless

it evolves, the Indian mind, which leads India, will be in a perpetual state of

confusion, ordinary people are perfectly all right. Consider for example how

thirty years before there was a question whether Tamil Nadu will be a part of

India or not. The Dravidian parties have taken over the mind of Tamil Nadu. It

had virtually ceased to be a part of India. And their attack was aimed at

Hinduism, the moment you attack Hinduism you attack India. This is a fact.

Neither politicians nor intellectuals nor academicians realised this. But, the

ordinary people did. Just three religious movements- the Ayyappa movement, the

Kavadi movement and the Melmaruvatthur Adi Para Sakti movement- have finsihed

the Dravidian ideology to a very great extent. It is only the outer shell of

Dravidianism that remains today. Tamil Nadu has been brought back successfully

by Ayyappa, Muruga and Para Sakti, not by the Congress or the BJP or any other

political party. How many people have intellectually assessed the depth and the

reach, the deep influence of religion over the people? A paradigm shift in a

study of India would be an intellectual approach to this subject. Or consider

for example its influence on economics. Many of you by now would have studied

economics in some detail. Take a look at the society in India and compare the

figures for public expenditure for private purposes, which is called the social

security system in the West. 30% of the GDP in America is spent for social

security, 48% in England, 49% in France, 56% in Germany and 67% in Sweden. This

private expenditure is nothing but what you and I do by taking care of parents,

our wives and children, brothers and sisters and grandparents, widowed sisters

and distant relatives. This expenditure is met by the society in India. And

there is no law in India that people should do this. We consider it as our

dharma. A person went to a court and demanded a divorce from his father and

mother. The American court granted it saying that the only relationship that

exists between two persons of America is their citizenship. The law in America

recognises no other relationship ... In the year 1978, an interesting incident

occurred in Manhattan. There was a power failure for six hours. Manhattan is in

the heart of New York where you find the UN building, the World Trade Centre and

the head quarters of many multi-national companies. One third of the world"s

health is concentrated in Manhattan. Within six hours, hundreds of people were

killed, robbed and assaulted. We don"t need electricity to behave in a

civilised manner. How many intellectuals in India have ever articulated from

such a sympathetic approach? We have only tarnished the image of this country.

We must be ashamed of this. Conclusion I shall conclude my speech with this

example. When Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry in search of a new light he

used to get five rupees from a friend and four persons used to live on this. A

cup of tea was one of the luxuries they used to have everyday in the morning,

on the Pondicherry beach. Sri Aurobindo used to always look at a mystic called

Kullachamy (Subramanya Bharati has written a poem about him). He used to behave

like a madman, wandering here and there, throwing stones ... One, day he came

near Sri Aurobindo, lifted his cup of tea and emptied it in front of him. Then

he showed the empty cup to him, placed it on the table and went away. Sri

Aurobindo"s friends were angry and wanted to chase him, Sri Aurobindo stopped

them and said, "This is the kind of instruction I had been expecting from him.

He wants me to empty my mind and start thinking afresh." That is my appeal to

you.

end of matter