Indian civilization and culture date back to millenniums. It is one of the best civilizations in the world. Some of the world religions have borne in India and spread across the continents. Indian culture was and is very much accommodative that it has provided a pivotal platform for the amalgamation of several world religions and cultures, without getting it denigrated or remaining to stagnate. The sole credit for this is the deeprooted epistemology and metaphysics that it upholds since ages. Yet, the country has remained underdeveloped and underprivileged compared to various other countries of the world. Wealth, prosperity and development have remained the sole property of a few individuals, depriving the same to the remaining 99 per cent. What could be the fundamental reason? Can our understanding of individual well-being be accounted for it?
A paradigm shift in the export
In old days India attracted thousands of people from across the world for the spices and condiments. That allowed people to learn our culture, spirituality, and wisdom. As the wisdom of the east began to spread across the world, the eastern perfume of knowledge began to attract the bees of wise. People flocked in, learnt our culture, language, texts and works and made it universal. Now the western people have understood that the best of intellectuals of the world are the Indians. Many of the countries are importing our IITians, software engineers, doctors and technicians to work for them. The artisans move abroad for their livelihood, often times, prefer to remain aback, niching themselves there, than to return and work for the country. In one of the documentaries released by CBS Worldwide, the reporter says, “The United States import oil from Saudi Arabia, cars from Japan, TVs from Korea and whisky from Scotland. So what do we import from India? We import people, really smart people from India… most successful, most influential people.” How then is our well educated, capable and potential people produced in the country prefer to work for other than us?
Some may place an objection to the above query, saying that there are several people who prefer to stay back and work, and also can cite examples of people who returned and worked for the welfare of the country. We do not negate this salient contribution, but respect and honour them. However, a question may still haunt us. We have the best of several kinds of mines in the country such as coal, gold, copper, uranium, iron, manganese, bauxite, etc. Why then these ores are exported and the same thing is imported back as ready materials? Why can’t we invest and make the opportunities available for our people? We have best of educational institutions, best of medical and technical colleges. But, the cream of these institutions is being exported abroad by the MNCs. Do we have an answer?
Ground zero situation of our people
The ground zero situation of the citizens of our country is alarming and heart-breaking. If one part of the country is seen flooding, the other part is wreathing in drought; if one has built a mansion, the neighbourhood is a slum colony; if one is acquiring hectares of cultivable land for the commercial purpose, the other is struggling to save a plot of land on which he/she is surviving; if one has secured highest job in a firm having a low grade in studies, the other in spite of the highest grade is moving from pillar to post in search of the job. Powerful are becoming more powerful, rich the richer and poor doomed to the abyss of poverty.
Organizations and political parties who are meant to provide fair justice, maintain equal distribution and welfare of every section of the society, are dividing and ruling the people whose custodians they are. One party is demeaning the other party’s good works. Instead of building on the good works done by the predecessors, count it to be worse and dismantle it, and sow the seeds of vengeance and dissention. Religion is meant to bind people (re-ligare). But often than binding, the custodians themselves are brawling up the tenets of their religions and often times promote it through their selected adherents to build a certain elitist culture.
This may sound odd to many, but it is the reality. If my culture is a community-oriented and aiming at the welfare of every citizen irrespective of caste, creed and religion, treating everyone as my own kit and kin, then I must be inclusive in all the aspect of my speech and act. If not, I am a hypocrite and a defector. But this inclusiveness does not happen very often in us. Primarily we seem to look at the good of the individuals rather than of the community, though the community welfare is indirectly aimed at.
Individual liberation Vis-à-vis Community liberation
Liberation is a chief focus in all the systems of religions across the world, be it Semitic or Asian. Everyone is aiming to get rid of samsāra, the wordiness to attain freedom. One of the Triratna’s (three jewels) of Buddhism is, “Saṅgham Saraṅam Gacchāmi,” I take shelter in the sangha, the community of believers. Ditto is the reality in all the Semitic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. They have a strong sense of community, every individual work for the community and the community, in turn, work for the individual liberation. The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus has a strong sense of the welfare of the community. Therefore, the people who have acquired such culture have a strong sense of community in contrast with individualist cultures.
Though, individual liberation is the ultimate purpose, the community of believers play an important role in achieving it. Good of the individuals in a family is the good of everyone and everyone’s good is the good of the whole family. However, in some cultures like Hinduism, stress given on the individual effort to achieve individual freedom is very much seen. Salvation is a personal effort. Person’s accumulated sins can be purged by the efforts of the same person. However, grace can be handy in some cases. A one-pointed devotion can earn grace for liberation. Once again it is left to the individual’s discretion. This becomes clear in the very fact of one’s worship practices, that the stress given to individual worship in contrast to the community worship is more.
This does not mean that we are demeaning the worship practices of a particular way of worship. Individual or community, a specific worship pattern has its own pros and cons. Ultimately, it is the individual who benefits.
The Individualism
One of the negative contributions of growing consumerism, globalism and postmodernism is the individual culture. Today, the human labour has been replaced by machine culture. Earlier, say for example, a group of people were involved in making a piece of cloth, which took few days of their labour. A single machine could do the same work more efficiently, and a thousand times faster than the earlier. The outcome of it is the community dimension of humans, and thus owning the outcome of it, that is, instead of saying ‘we did it’, now they say ‘it did it.’ Here, the final credit goes to the owner of the machine.
“Desire is the root cause of suffering,” says the Buddha. Desiring to be rich, successful and great is not wrong in itself, nor was absent in olden days. But, the growing materialistic tendencies and machine culture have bred to selfishness and desire to be instantly rich. This has given rise to ‘instant remedies’. How many families prefer fast food like noodles, Maggie etc., while their home-made ‘shevai’ is discarded owing to time taking endeavour?! These ‘instant solutions’ not only harm our physical health, but also the family ‘relational health.’
Therefore, we don’t need to learn the rocket technology to see the individual ‘selfishness’ which becomes the Damocles’ Sword for the growth and well-being of a community. See, for example, the state of Jharkhand. It is one of the richest states of India in terms of resources. The finest gold, copper, uranium, coal, bauxite and iron ores are in its crest. The State was full of water bodies and rivers. One of the finest forests, in terms of bio-diversity of Asia, is in Jharkhand. Yet, it is the least developed in terms of infrastructures, education, and economy. Governments after governments who ruled in the past and present are busy not in the welfare of the state, but the welfare of certain vested interested groups of people. How do we account for this contradiction, being poor at the time of owning rich resources? Even, those crumb fallen so far from the ruler’s desks would have been sufficient to alleviate the basic needs of the people of the place. This is the Pandora box we need to crack down.
The individualism is affecting not only to the State of Jharkhand but to every state of the country. More so, where the voiceless people of the society inhabit. These voiceless are the Dalits, tribals, women, minorities, poor, destitute and people of lower strata of a creed. These are the easy targets for the MNCs, money-makers, politicians and even to a certain extent the religious leaders. The innocence of these people seems to be the strength of these colonials.
How then, do we bring the change? It may seem a utopia, but not impossible to attain. Unless we change our minds we can never grow. We need to move from individual-centred life to community-centred life. We need to make ‘community’ as our centres, rather than ‘individuals’ as our point of departure. Our every projects, decisions, activity be it at the grass root level or at the national level should be transparent. Let the decision be open to all, and take a collective decision in the decision-making body. Let everyone know every aspect of funds being allotted and being utilized. Collective and accommodating was our culture and must be in the days to come. Being rooted in our collective culture and traditions lets march ahead towards the welfare of all irrespective of caste and creed. Then, a new India is possible.
Fr. Raju Felix Crasta
