Excerpts from talk on “India and Indian Culture” - Part 4

[Guest guest]

Excerpts from talk on “India and Indian Culture” delivered by Anbil Ramaswamy, at “Alterra Sterling House (Senior Care Facility) at 1277 S. Sawburg Rd, Alliance, OH 44601 on 22nd September 2007 (An All- American audience) – Part 4

“Revival of the faded glory”

We saw that because of the subjugation and systematic plundering for nearly 1000 years by the Muslims and the “divide and rule” policy of the British combined with indoctrination of the elite into the western culture (?) India became so emaciated and impoverished that when freedom from foreign yoke arrived suddenly, a tremendous vacuum seized the country in political and more so in the economic fields. It became a “free for all” in “grabbing what one could and how quickly it could” – a syndrome not experienced by any of the “developed countries” and never before even in India.

 

An emaciation that sapped the vitality of a nation for about a millennium cannot be neutralized in the matter of a few decades (60 years as of 2007)! It is therefore not fair on the part of Westerners and the Indians disoriented by the influence of Western cultures to gleefully criticize the backwardness and poverty of present India and the painfully slow pace of India’s recovery.

 

Nevertheless, discreet scholars both Indian and Western never failed to read lessons from the past and predict the bright future that awaited India and its culture. We present a few excerpts from “What the Scholars say” followed by “What is happening today? and “Outlook for the future”

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What the Scholars say about India?

(Note: Except where otherwise indicated, the quotes are from “Hinduism Rediscovered” by

Anbil Ramaswamy)

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Louis Renou, Prof. of Sanskrit and Indian literature, Sorizunne, Paris, and Prof. Yale University. Pub: George Bazellier, NY, 1962.

“Even the Greeks who came to India were wonderstruck by this amalgam of Hindu philosophy that in the words of RENOU "Can still be of some efficacy again to our `blase' culture and Hinduism can be better defined as Wisdom rather than the equivocal term ‘spirituality’ "

 

Max Muller: “The Sacred Books of the East”, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1897. MAX MULLER thunders - "If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life and has found solutions for some of them, which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied PLATO and KANT - I should point to India. And, if I were to ask myself from what literature, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of the Greeks and the Romans and of one Semitic race - the Jewish, may draw corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal- in fact, more truly human a life-not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life - again, I should point to India" He observes further: " It is surely astounding that such a system as Vedanta should have been slowly established by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us giddy, as in the mounting the last steps of the swaying spire of the ancient Gothic Cathedral"

 

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU, the first Prime Minister of India “Discovery of India” (p.187) Jawaharlal Nehru, Doubleday & Co. Garden City, NY. 1960

"We can never forget the ideals that have moved our race; the dreams of the Indian people through the ages; the wisdom of the ancients; the buoyant energy and love of life and nature of our forefathers; their spirit of curiosity and mental adventure; the daring of their thought; their splendid achievement in literature, art and culture; their love of truth and beauty and freedom; the basic values that they set up; their understanding of the life's mysterious ways; their toleration of other ways than theirs; their capacity to absorb other peoples and their cultural accomplishments, synthesize them and develop a varied and mixed culture; nor can we forget the myriad

 

HENRICH ZIMMER declares “The Philosophies of India” Columbia University, Ballinger Series, xxxvi. Pub. Joseph Campbell, NY, 1974

"We of the Occident are about to arrive at crossroads that was reached by the thinkers of India hundreds of years before Christ"

 

TROY WILSON ORGAN Prof. of philosophy, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio "Hinduism-its historical development", Pub: Barron's Educational Series Inc., Woodbury, NY, 1974

“I am wonderstruck at the strange amalgam that India is. He observes: "Probably nowhere else do people live in so many centuries simultaneously. Sun worship and atomic research, Ox carts and jet planes, Astrology and theoretical physics, Magic and modern medicine, Ultra-modern multi-storied buildings and mud huts-- These do mix in India"

 

OPPENHEIMER, the great World Scientist who was responsible for the development of the atom bomb says: - "Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries. There is no study so beneficial and as elevating as that of the Upanishads. IT HAS BEEN THE SOLACE OF MY LIFE; IT WILL BE THE SOLACE OF MY DEATH"

 

ALBERT EINSTEIN: “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made”

 

MARK TWAIN: “India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grandmother of tradition”

 

CARL SAGAN, the famous Astro-physicist observes: - " The Hindu religion is the Only One of the World's great faiths dedicated to the idea that cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern cosmology... And, while our intelligence has recently provided us with awesome powers, it is not yet clear that we have the wisdom to avoid our own self-destruction"

 

RABINDRANATH TAGORE, the Nobel Laureate predicted: "India is destined to be the teacher of all lands"

 

ROMAN ROLLAND another Nobel Laureate and Professor of History of music at the Sorbonne and thinker states "If there is one face on this earth where all the dreams of living men and women have found a home from the very earliest days when man and woman began to dream of existence, it is India... For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay" (from Hinduism Rediscovered book)

He continues: “Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach” (from http://www.hinduvoice.co.uk )

 

WILL DURANT declares " Nothing should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India...This the India that patient scholarship is now opening up like a new intellectual continent to that Western mind which only yesterday thought civilization an exclusive European thing"

 

KLOSTERMAIER, Professor, Religious Studies at the University of Manitoba says: “Hinduism has proven much more open than any other religion to new ideas, scientific thought and Social experimentation. Many concepts like reincarnation, meditation, yoga and others have found worldwide acceptance. It would not be surprising to find Hinduism dominant religion of the twenty-first century”

(from http://www.hinduvoice.co.uk)

 

OCTAVIO PAZ, Nobel laureate in 1990:

“The Hindu genius is a love for abstraction and, at the same time, a passion for the concrete image. At times, it is rich, at others prolix. It has created the most lucid and the most instinctive art. It is abstract and realistic, sexual and intellectual, pedantic and sublime, lives between extremes. It embraces the extremes, rooted in the earth and drawn to invisible beyond” from http://www.hinduvoice.co.uk)

 

JOHN WOODROFF aka ARTHUR AVALON, Advocate General and former Legal Member of the Government of India:

“ An examination of the Vedic thesis shows that it is in conformity with the most advanced philosophical and scientific thoughts of the West and, where this is not so, it is the scientist who will go to the Vedantist and not the Vedantist to the Scientist” (from http://www.hinduvoice.co.uk)

 

HU SHIH (Former Chinese Ambassador to USA):“India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border”

 

N.A. PALKIWALA, the eminent jurist says, "India is eternal, everlasting. Though the beginnings of her numerous civilizations go so far back in time that they are lost in the twilight of history, she has the gift of perpetual youth. Her culture is ageless and is as relevant to this present 20th century as it was to the 20th century before Christ"

 

MR. HARCHARAN SINGH JOSH, President of the Indian Council of World Affairs said in a recent seminar on "Ethical and moral values in business and professions" organized by the London borough of Croydon at Croydon College, referred to India's record of representative institutions:

 

"India's heart still beats for justice, liberty, equality, fraternity and tolerance, even when many countries, including those in the neighborhood, have cast off democracy and assumed open or veiled dictatorship under the impact of religious fundamentalism.

The West has often judged Asian nations struggling to remove poverty, hunger, and ignorance by yardsticks, which they themselves took a few centuries to evolve while they built their wealth and prosperity on ruthless exploitation of labor and enslaved nations. Their preaching of human rights, patent laws and other similar impositions on struggling developing nations, therefore sound hollow"

 

ARNOLD TOYENBEE in his address delivered at Edinburgh University in 1952on his survey of the history of the human race predicts: "In 50 years, the world would be under the hegemony of the U.S.A. but in the 21st century, as religion captures the place of technology, it is possible that India the conquered will conquer the conqueror... It is already becoming clear that a chapter that had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending, if it is not to end in self- destruction of the human race. If human race has to be saved, it has to embrace the Hindu way"

 

ASHBY PHILIP of Princeton University "Christian Century" (p.2) Pub: LIFE Magazine echoes:

"The Hindu argument that all religions are equally valid may well sweep the world in the next 25 years. It may well be that within the foreseeable future it will be Hinduism which will be challenging Christianity not only in India but in the west as well. Hinduism indeed has a new vitality not only suitable for defense but also adaptable for offense against Western religions"

 

HEGEL, the great German philosopher agrees: "India has created a special momentum in World history as a country to be searched for”

(Quotes from “Hinduism Rediscovered” by Anbil Ramaswamy)

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PREDICTIONS COME TRUE

Let us see how these predictions have come true and India is surely and steadily regaining her faded glory as evidenced by the top positions a few Indian have come to occupy in various fields. The list is only illustrative.

1. Vinod Khosla: Co- Founder of Sun Microsystems

2. Vinod Dahm: Creator of Pentium chip that 90% of today’s computers run on.

3. Azim Premji: Third richest man in the World. (Sultan of Brunei is at 6th position)

4. Sabeer Bhatia: Founder and creator of Hotmail (No.1 Web based email program)

5. Arun Netravali: President of AT & T- Bell Labs and creator of C, C++, Unix etc.

6. Rajiv Gupta: GM of Hewlett Packard

7. Sanjay Tejwrika: New MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000.

8. Victor Menezes, Rajat Guta and Rana Talwar: Chief Executives of Citibank, Mckensey and Stanchart.

9. Anand: World’s Chess Champion

10. Sunita Williams: The first woman to stay in space and endure for several

 

months.

 

But, the most important person in India is the common man who braved the Tsunami cataclysm never before seen in human history instilling hope in our hearts that India is now ready to face any challenge and come out triumphant.

BE PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN!

To Continue: “INDIA AND HINDU- A Sneak preview of Hinduism”==========================================================