OF  HUMAN  LIBERATION

 

    MAHENDRA  MATHUR

 

The goal of life is joy, serenity, and not pleasure or happiness. Joy is the fulfillment of one’s nature as a human being. We must affirm our being against the whole world, if need be.

If there were a world government, with a Ministry of “Born in God’s Image” a major component of it, there would be no conflict of any kind. Everything would be interrelated beautifully, harmonized perfectly. Maybe there would be no wars and conflicts of any kind, and all contention would cease. This is the hope of humanity.

 

PUSTAK PRESS

 

CHAPTER I

Planning a holiday

A surprise party for our (Amma and I) fiftieth wedding anniversary by our daughters and our grandchildren included a slide show of our first fifteen years together in India. Among them stood out our honeymoon at Darjeeling, our first year of married life and birth of our son, Varun, at Calcutta, my assignment as a Garrison Engineer (on being promoted to the rank of major) at Shillong and move to Gauhati in the aftermath of Chinese invasion in 1962. While serving in the Indian Army ( 1953 to 1975) I had left Gauhati in 1964 to command 10 Field Company in North East Frontier Agency at Rupa and now an urge to revisit

Gauhati, Shillong and Calcutta obsessed me. I looked for an excuse to plan a trip there but could find none. By a strange coincidence my nephew in Mumbai, Yatin, rang me out of the blue and insisted that Amma and I be there in November to attend his son’s wedding. Spontaneously did I accept the invitation with my agenda of attaching a trip to North East India before the wedding and a sojourn to Edinburgh in Scotland (where our grandson Kiran was studying) after the wedding.

 

As I disclosed my plan to the family, Ira, our elder daughter seized the opportunity by offering to join us at Shillong provided we also included Delhi and Bhopal in the itinerary. We happily yielded. And we all agreed that this time the holidays will be an antidote to the austere holidays that we generally let ourselves be oppressed with. We would aim to be as much luxurious as our finances would allow. In this resolve my accumulated pension at the State Bank of India from Indian Army would not hurt the cause at all. We all would aim to make it a time of happiness and peace. Zia and I would leave during October 2010 for London and Delhi and then to Darjeeling for a ten-day stay at the queen of hills till it is time to leave for the rendezvous with Ira and her husband at Shillong.

 

One of the motives behind booking the holiday was to have an experience that would last for our remaining years on the Earth. For six weeks our familiar surroundings in Trinidad would be packed up, and once out of sight, they would be out of mind. And their place would be taken by a world that had signed off and was dormant for decades. The memory was already harking after discontinuities, breaks and changes. To recapture them never to lose again was my pleasant self-imposed assignment. The sentiment was one which echoed words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

 

With the lofty aim of delegating all the work involved in the holiday and appropriating all that was beautiful to myself, I got Imshah, Ira’s husband, to book all our international flights and Bobby, my nephew at Delhi, to book all internal flights and hotels in India. Now the stage was set for our six weeks’ odyssey.

 

We would begin our wandering from England where we would visit Canterbury, if not on horses in the style of Chaucer, at least on a train which where Champagne would be served. On landing at New Delhi, I would visit my ailing sister and then whisk off my wife to Darjeeling where we honeymooned fifty years back. Borjhar airfield, Gauhati, where I was the first Garrison Engineer in 1962 to make that airport fit for Indian Air Force, would be the next stop. A re-entry in the world of my memories at Shillong and Calcutta would be followed by fun time with family and friends at Delhi and Mumbai. While the rest of the party would sojourn at Bhopal, I would seek path to the Almighty by a pilgrimage to Omkameshwar temple at Indore. With soul liberated I would end the holiday by a week’s stay at the same apartment at Edinburgh in Scotland where we had holidayed in 2001 and where our grandson was now a University student.

CHAPTER 2

Automn Leaves at London and thoughts of Spinoza and Churchill     

 

While scanning my bookshelves for books to read during the hours of traveling by air and trains I cane across Spinoza’s Ethics with a stamp on it of Gauhati Library that revealed that the book had been borrowed in August 1964 by someone and not returned. That ‘someone’ had to be me who forgot to return the book on being posted out of Gauhati. I picked it up as the book to be read during my journey to Gauhati and then returned there. 

 

It was indeed illuminating to read Spinoza on the flight to London and to reflect on what he wrote:

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.      

There is no individual thing in nature, than which there is not another more powerful and strong. Whatsoever thing be given, there is something stronger whereby it can be destroyed.

 

After the Airport Express from Gatwick airport had deposited us at Victoria station, the autumn morning drive to our rented apartment at Notting Hill among falling leaves and floating mist was enchanting. Coming out of the perpetual heat of Trinidad there was nothing more pleasing then to lie down under a quilt and browse through local newspapers. An article entitled ‘How Churchill starved India’ caught my eye. What follows is an extract of the article.

 

It is 1943, the peak of the Second World War. The place is London. The British War Cabinet is holding meetings on a

famine sweeping its troubled colony, India. Millions of natives mainly in eastern Bengal, are starving. Leopold Amery, secretary of state for India, and Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell, soon to be appointed the new viceroy of India, are deliberating how to ship more food to the colony. But the irascible Prime Minister Winston Churchill is coming in their way.

"Apparently it is more important to save the Greeks and liberated countries than the Indians and there is reluctance either to provide shipping or to reduce stocks in this country," writes Sir Wavell in his account of the meetings. Mr Amery is more direct. "Winston may be right in saying that the starvation of anyhow under-fed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks, but he makes no sufficient allowance for the sense of Empire responsibility in this country," he writes.

Some three million Indians died in the famine of 1943. The majority of the deaths were in Bengal. In a shocking new book, Churchill's Secret War, journalist Madhusree Mukherjee blames Mr Churchill's policies for being largely responsible for one of the worst famines in India's history. It is a gripping and scholarly investigation into what must count as one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the Empire.

The scarcity, Mukherjee writes, was caused by large-scale exports of food from India for use in the war theatres and consumption in Britain - India exported more than 70,000 tonnes of rice between January and July 1943, even as the famine set in. This would have kept nearly 400,000 people alive for a full year. Mr Churchill turned down fervent pleas to export food to India citing a shortage of ships - this when shiploads of Australian wheat, for example, would pass by India to be stored for future consumption in Europe. As imports dropped, prices shot up and hoarders made a killing. Mr Churchill also pushed a scorched earth policy - which went by the sinister name of Denial Policy - in coastal Bengal where the colonisers feared the Japanese would land. So authorities removed boats (the lifeline of the region) and the police destroyed and seized rice stocks.

In the end, Mukherjee writes eloquently, it was "not so much racism as the imbalance of power inherent in the social Darwinian pyramid that explains why famine could be tolerated in India while bread rationing was regarded as an intolerable deprivation in wartime Britain". For colonial apologists, the book is essential reading. It is a terrifying account of how colonial rule is direly exploitative and, in this case, made worse by a man who made no bones of his contempt for India and its people.

 

That Churchill, as Prime Minister, was not master of his emotions and was dependent on fortune for his decisions is apparent from his statement: “The high belief in the perfection of man is appropriate in a man of the cloth but not in a prime minister.” No wonder he thought nothing of starving Indians as his mind was completely occupied with the war effort and well-being of his own people. But by his action or non-action he did validate Spinoza’s theory of human bondage.  He was so much at the mercy of fortune that he followed an inhuman policy at the cost of thousands of lives.

 

Neelum and Vishnu, our friends from Tobago of 1980s, brought dinner at our apartment which I supplemented with two bottles of Pinot Noir. Since both of them had just come out of major ailments and Zia was a teetotaller, I indulged myself and ended up consuming most of the wine. It was such a great start of the holiday that next day’s planned ‘pilgrimage’ to Canterbury with champagne on the train journey was rendered redundant. We spent the day loitering about at the nearby Portobello Market and taking bus rides to nowhere just to have a feel of falling autumn leaves in London.

 

 CHAPTER III

Return from ‘Highest Mind-consciousness’ at Delhi

 

Before emplaning for Delhi at Heathrow I picked up a book by Sri Aurobindo – The Nature of Supermind – to browse through the long flight. After a lifetime of studies in Philosophy, pilgrimages to Tibet and Nepal and writing and lecturing on the Gita, the reader might forgive me for dreaming that I had nearly scaled the highest mind-consciousness as visualized by Aurobindo:

‘The aim of supramental Yoga is to change into this supreme Truth-consciousness, but this truth is something beyond mind and this consciousness is far above the highest mind-consciousness. For truth of mind is always relative, uncertain and partial, but this greater Truth is preemptory and whole. Truth of mind is a representation, always an inadequate, most often a misleading representation, and even when most accurate, only a reflection, Truth's shadow and not its body. Mind does not live in the Truth or possess but only seeks after it and grasps at best some threads from its robe; the supermind lives in Truth and [is] its native substance, form and expression; it has not to seek after it, but possesses it always automatically and is what it possesses. This is the very heart of the difference.

'The change that is effected by the transition from mind to supermind is not only a revolution in knowledge or in our power for knowledge. If it is [to] be complete and stable, it must be a divine transmutation of our will too, our emotions, our sensations, all our power of life and its forces, in the end even of the very substance and functioning of our body. Then only can it be said that the supermind is there upon earth, rooted in its very earth-substance and embodied in a new race of divinized creatures.

 

'Supermind at its highest reach is the divine Gnosis, the Wisdom-Power-Light-Bliss of God by which the Divine knows and upholds and governs and enjoys the universe.'

CHAPTER IV

 

Love Among Cousins at Kanpur

 

On the Shatabdi train from Delhi to Kanpur I reached out to my Bhagwat Gita and found great solace in the verses from second chapter:

 

The wise in heart
Mourn not for those that live, nor those that die.
Nor I, nor thou, nor any one of these,
Ever was not, nor ever will not be,
For ever and for ever afterwards.
All, that doth live, lives always! To man's frame
As there come infancy and youth and age,
So come there raisings-up and layings-down
Of other and of other life-abodes,
Which the wise know, and fear not.

 

The ride on the train was quick and eager. Trees, river and the sky raced off. Breakfast and lunch were served as the train sped through structures, bridges and colonies of low-income workers. At Kanpur station as the doors of our compartment opened Aarushi, daughter of my niece Deepa, was there to pick us up. We drove straight to Tarun’s house that transformed itself to a house of mourning. My younger brother Ravi and his wife Krishna, who had come from Jaipur, were like rocks supporting the bereaved family.

 

While Saloni was surrounded by her young friends at the hour of her agony, Veena and Upama could not stop torrents of tears from their eyes. No words from me could console them. So I made my memory speak some words of Krishna from the Gita.

 

Atman (soul) is immortal and eternal. Just as an individual changes his clothes to suit the convenience of the occasion, so too the Atman discards one physical form and takes to another.  Weapons cleave it not, fire burns it not, water wets it not and wind dries it not. Changing of our old clothes that have become worn out, with new, cannot be a pain for anyone.

 

Just as I paused to wonder if these words would have any meaning for the unfortunate ladies, I was wonder struck at the comprehension by Veena of this example. She came to understand the idea clearly and the wailing stopped. If grief was not at the end it had subsided greatly. We could now retire for the night and were dropped at a nearby hotel.

 

Next morning the house of mourning transformed itself into a house of family reunion, love and peace.

 

CHAPTER V

 

A View of Mount Everest and Kanchenjunga

 

The twelve-hour train journey through U.P., Bihar and Assam brought the familiar landscape to my view at which I had gazed several times in nineteen-sixties when I had served in Assam. It also gave me an opportunity to resume my study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Of special interest to me was now his doctrine of human conduct extracts of which are reproduced below.

 

Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing.

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

The idea of an individual thing actually existing is caused by God, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is considered as affected by another idea of a thing actually existing, of which he is the cause, in so far as he is affected by a third idea, and so on to infinity.

The first element, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is the idea of some particular thing actually existing.

The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a great number of impressions.

If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing, or as present to itself, until the human body be affected in such a way, as to exclude the existence or the presence of the said external body.

This idea of the mind is united to the mind in the same way as the mind is united to the body.

The human mind does not involve an adequate knowledge of the parts composing the human body.

We can only have a very inadequate knowledge of the duration of our body.

Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.

Whatsoever ideas in the mind follow from ideas which are therein adequate, are also themselves adequate

He, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.

Every idea of every body, or of every particular thing actually existing, necessarily involves the eternal and infinite essence of God.

The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God.

 

It remains to point out the advantages of knowledge of this doctrine as bearing on conduct, and this may be easily gathered from what has been said. The doctrine is good,

1. Inasmuch as it teaches us to act solely according to the decree of God, and to be partakers in the Divine nature, and so much the more, as we perform more perfect actions and more and more understand God. Such a doctrine not only completely tranquilizes our spirit, but also shows us where our highest happiness or blessedness is, namely, solely in the knowledge of God, whereby we are led to act only as love and piety shall bid us. We may thus clearly understand, how far astray from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be decorated by God with high rewards for their virtue, and their best actions, as for having endured the direst slavery ; as if virtue and the service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom.

2. Inasmuch as it teaches us, how we ought to conduct ourselves with respect to the gifts of fortune, or matters which are not in our power, and do not follow from our nature. For it shows us, that we should await and endure fortune's smiles or frowns with an equal mind, seeing that all things follow from the eternal decree of God by the same necessity, as it follows from the essence of a triangle, that the three angles are equal to two right angles.

3. This doctrine raises social life, inasmuch as it teaches us to hate no man, neither to despise, to deride, to envy, or to be angry with any. Further, as it tells us that each should be content with his own, and helpful to his neighbour, not from any womanish pity, favour, or superstition, but solely by the guidance of reason, according as the time and occasion demand.

4. Lastly, this doctrine confers no small advantage on the commonwealth ; for it teaches how citizens should be governed and led, not so as to become slaves, but so that they may freely do whatsoever things are best.

CHAPTER VIII

But here at Ri Kynjal’s spacious room with a balcony looking out at the gigantic lake was like living in paradise. As we sat there sipping wine and gazing at the stars in the evening I could not help reflecting that well might have Wordsworth written the following poem at Ri Kynjal in 2010 rather than by the side of Grasmere Lake in 1806.

CLOUDS, lingering yet, extend in solid bars
Through the grey west; and lo! these waters, steeled
By breezeless air to smoothest polish, yield
A vivid repetition of the stars;
Jove, Venus, and the ruddy crest of Mars
Amid his fellows beauteously revealed
At happy distance from earth's groaning field,
Where ruthless mortals wage incessant wars.
Is it a mirror?--or the nether Sphere
Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds
Her own calm fires?--But list! a voice is near;
Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds,
'Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds
Ravage the world, tranquility is here!'  

CHAPTER IX

, I thought of Tagore’s words “We live in the world when we love Almost seventy years after his death, Gurudav Rabindra Nath Tagore is still a great presence in Kolkota. Rabindra Sangeet reverberates the streets. The city’s beautiful lake bears his name. And world class cardiac care facilities are provided here by Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences. His wisdom is not abstract but very much down-to-earth as shown by the words that follow.

 

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love is most free and at the same time most bound.

True education can never be crammed and pumped from without; rather it must aid in bringing spontaneously to the surface the infinite hoards of wisdom within.

it.”

 CHAPTER IX - Gurudev and Teresa

Almost seventy years after his death, Gurudav Rabindra Nath Tagore is still a great presence in Kolkota. Rabindra Sangeet reverberates the streets. The city’s beautiful lake bears his name. And world class cardiac care facilities are provided here by Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences. His wisdom is not abstract but very much down-to-earth as shown by the words that follow.

 

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love is most free and at the same time most bound.

True education can never be crammed and pumped from without; rather it must aid in bringing spontaneously to the surface the infinite hoards of wisdom within it.

CHAPTER X

Dressed in saffron robes, adorned with rudra raksh garlands, sporting a sandal wood mark on his forehead and delivering discourses on Hindu scriptures in temples across eastern Uttar Pradesh, this ”saint” is actually a devout Muslim, who offers namaz five times a day. Meet Mohammed Yaseen, 60, a resident of Pipraich village in the district of Gorakhpur, some 300 km from state capital Lucknow who has been  giving lectures on Ramayana and the Gita for forty years. “I believe there is lot to learn from the Holy Scriptures, particularly Ramayana and the Gita that guide our behavior towards individuals, family and society”, Yaseen told a reporter.

 

After all the whole of the Ramayana is an Epic of humanity. Humanity does not mean mankind but that which particularly human nature. It is in this sense, Sri Rama is oftentimes called the paragon of humanity, an example of the perfection of human nature. This perfection is not inclusive of the foibles of man in his lower endowments. That majestic feature of bodily personality, the ideal perfection of physiological structure, the beauty of understanding, dignity of behavior, exemplary nature of conduct--to put it in one word 'perfection' as conceived or as conceivable by the human understanding--this is what comes forth as an answer from the great sage Narada.

 

            And as for the Gita, it teaches the best path to the goal of freedom is to perform one's duties with a spirit of nonattachment without caring for the fruits of one's actions and without the thought of pleasure or pain, profit or loss, or victory or failure, with a sense of equanimity and equality. The Kantian ethic of "duty for duty's sake" seems to be the nearest Western parallel to Krishna's teaching at this stage. But Krishna soon went beyond it, by pointing out that performance of action with complete nonattachment requires knowledge (jnana) of the true nature of the self, its distinction from prakrti, or Matter (the primeval stuff, not the world of matter perceived by the senses), with its three component elements (sattva - i.e., tension or harmony; rajas - i.e., activity; and tamas - i.e., inertia), and of the highest self (purusottama), whose higher and lower aspects are Matter and finite individuals, respectively. This knowledge of the highest self or the supreme lord, however, would only require a devotional attitude of complete self-surrender and performance of one's duties in the spirit of offering to him. Thus, karma-yoga (yoga of works) is made to depend on jnana-yoga (yoga of knowledge), and the latter is shown to lead to bhakti-yoga (yoga of devotion).

CHAPTER XI - "The Difficulty Of Being Good"

Sonia gives me a welcoming gift in the form of a book “The Difficulty of Being Good” by Gurcharan Das. The book is about characters from Mahabharata, their stories, actions and moral implications of those. Each chapter focuses on a different character, and examines an episode from the Mahabharata about the character and looks at the morality of the situation. Here are the names of some chapters:

• Duryodhana’s envy
• Draupadi’s courage
• Yudhistara’s duty
• Arjuna’s despair
• Bhishma’s selflessness

The book looks at the moral dilemmas that various characters faced throughout Mahabharata, and analyzes them from different perspectives.

“One should not do to another what one regards as injurious to oneself. This, in brief, is the law of Dharma.”

 

The book begins on a note of envy and intense jealousy that the Kaurava kin, Duryodhana possesses against his Pandava counterpart, Yudhishtira.

 

In the epic, after the Pandavas lose to the evil scheme of gambling devised by Shakuni, Draupadi brings into picture the material question of Dharma, as law and as what is right, thereby weighing it in both, the moral and legal context. In the twelve years of exile that the five brothers face, Yudhishtira becomes an idealist and wishes to practice forgiveness and forget that which their brothers did unto them. Through Bhima’s and Draupadi’s provocation, he is made to realize that an idealist is not what he is expected to be, which only throws light on the vulnerability of the human mind and shows how his realist approach leads only to destruction later on.

 

What has been beautifully and metaphorically illustrated is our two inner selves, much like two plumed birds on a peepal tree. Das opines that within all of us, there is one inner self which does or refrains from doing something and there is another self which  watches the act being omitted or committed.

 

This work presents how every character has their moment of pride, anguish, chagrin, envy, deceit, vengeance, remorse and guilt and the role played by Krishna in the entire episode can only make one ponder over his divinity. It only raises doubts over the same. Krishna’s deceitful tactics, of using ends which supersede the means, only leaves behind one rhetoric….A God or man himself? One, then , can be rest assured of him possessing multiple identities. If the Karma theory is anything to go by, it has rightly been marked that he died the meanest death in history.

 

The concept of “What goes around, comes around”. Pervades the book Whether it be Shakuni’s evil plot countered by an equally grotesque and gory battle or the subterfuge of the Pandavas in the war being countered by Ashwattama when he set their camps ablaze and killed all the Pandava kins, the book promulgates the ‘Karma Theory’, of course, in lines of Dharma.

 

Towards the end of the war, the book shows how every victor also has so much to lose and that can be deciphered from the remorse-struck Yudhishtira, who has anything but happiness and comfort in his life post the fierce war. This only reiterates how today revenge has become a “human need” and thus, we have devised retributive mechanisms to penalize violations of law.

 

All in all, be it the selfless Bhishma, the envious Duryodhana, the powerful Arjuna, the tricky Krishna, the inexorable Karna, the idealist-turned-pragmatist Yudhishtira, etc., throughout this book, Das has appositely made a point that all such practices have been inherent in society since time immemorial, though it is only now that it has become the order of the day.

 

As for the great epic, it has been rightly held, “The Mahabharata sees a vice behind every virtue, a snake behind every horse, and a doomsday behind every victory, an uncompleted ritual behind every completed sacrifice.”

 

After reading the book I wondered why charity was not highlighted in the Mahabharata as a great virtue. Surely no vice can be seen behind this virtue. What follows is the answer that came from a newspaper article that analyses the lack of charity in the Indian psyche.

 

A huge charity gift by a high-tech tycoon has shone a harsh light on the philanthropic track record of India’s established and emerging billionaires.

Azim Premji, who transformed a family-owned cooking oil firm into the software giant Wipro, announced earlier this month that he was giving two billion dollars to fund rural education.

The 100 wealthiest Indians have a net worth equal to 25 percent of India’s GDP and Premji’s donation – by far the largest ever made by an individual – was seen as a challenge to others in the ultra-rich club.

While charitable giving by the wealthy is widespread in countries like the United States, it is far less established in developing nations such as India and China.

Arpan Sheth, author of an overview of philanthropy in India by global consultancy Bain, says the charitable potential of the world’s second-fastest-growing major economy is huge.

“Should individuals (in India), particularly the well off, be giving more? And can they afford to make more and larger donations? The answer to both questions is, ‘Absolutely yes’,” Sheth said.

India’s booming economy – expected to grow 8.5 per cent this year – minted 17 new billionaires in 2010, driving the national total to a record 69, according to Forbes magazine.

Two Indians, Lakshmi Mittal and Mukesh Ambani, currently figure in the top five on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest individuals.

But philanthropic activity has failed to keep pace, partly, Sheth believes, because the rapid accumulation of individual wealth is a still a relatively new phenomenon.

“We have a history of scarcity and so it takes a while to build confidence that the future will be better on a sustainable basis and let go of newly earned wealth,” Sheth told AFP.

Ambani’s father was a rags-to-riches tycoon, who started off as a small-time textiles trader and went on to found and build Reliance Industries – now India’s largest private sector firm.

There is also a suspicion that charitable networks in India are not professionally managed and so donors fear their contributions “won’t be put to good use or are at risk of being misappropriated,” Seth said.

The Bain report noted that it normally takes 50 to 100 years for a culture of philanthropy to emerge, and Sheth stressed that charitable giving in India had yet to attain the same social cachet it attracts elsewhere.

“Instead, many of the newly wealthy view increased material wealth as the key to improving their social standing,” he said.

Open displays of wealth are often more admired than criticised in India, where the rich commonly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars – sometimes millions –on lavish weddings.

Mukesh Ambani’s construction of a billion-dollar, 27-storey home in Mumbai, where 60 per cent of the 18 million population are slumdwellers, raised some eyebrows but little overt resentment.

Wipro’s Premji, known for his frugal lifestyle, said conspicuous consumption was common in countries climbing the wealth ladder.

“You see it in China, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand. For the first few years, people want to show visibly they are very rich,” he told AFP.

In India, individuals and companies account for just 10 per cent of charity funding, compared with 75 percent in the United States.

“Our profile is closer to China, where giving by the government far exceeds donations by individuals,” Sheth said.

Traditionally, so-called “old money,” embodied in the likes of India’s 142-year-old Tata Group conglomerate, has focused on promoting the welfare of workers, with health care and housing.

Other big Indian business houses gave money for building Hindu temples and other religious causes. Rich individuals also helped in their family villages by building schools and wells.

But according to philanthropy expert and former New York investment banker Deval Sanghavi, there are signs of donors widening their horizons and looking to tackle India’s education, health and other problems on a macro level.

“Initially people thought it necessary to help those closest in their households or villages, but now they realise help needs to be on a wider scale,” Sanghavi said.

Wealthy individuals now are “getting involved in charity and wanting to change the country,” he added.

Together with his wife, Sanghavi runs the Dasra (Enlightened Giving) foundation, helping donors pick charities which can use their money best.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder of India’s largest mobile company, has set up 237 schools to educate the poor, saying he wants to help children break out of the “generational poverty cycle.”And global charities working in India, like Oxfam, have begun soliciting funds locally and not just overseas.

“Our economy has been growing by nine per cent for almost a decade. People have more disposable income and want to be part of the solution,” said Kunal Verma, marketing director at Oxfam India.

The need for charitable funding in India is self-evident.

Some 42 percent of Indians, or 455 million people, live on less than 1.25 dollars a day, according to the World Bank and India’s statistics on health, infant mortality and malnutrition are worse than those for sub-Saharan Africa.

But there’s little sign yet of India’s rich taking “The Giving Pledge” — an initiative by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffet that asks the wealthy to donate half their fortunes to charity.

The duo organised a dinner for China’s mega-rich last September and say they may host a similar event in India early next year.

Billionaire Shiv Nadar, the founder of tech giant HCL who pledged in June to give 130 million dollars to education, believes India’s rich are still not ready to embrace the Gates’ concept.

 

 

CHAPTER XII

A Wedding and a Killing Ground at Mumbai

Before I immerse in the wedding of Yatin’s son, Ashwal, let us hear Ira’s impressions of Mumbai:

“Spread your legs Bhua” (aunt) said a male voice solicitously.

I was at one of many pre wedding functions held for a cousins sons wedding in a villa in Mumbai’s trendy Juhu beach district where my father’s family had gathered from all over India. I didn’t think I heard right.

Actually I was at the time on the phone from my hot cousin, Meher  a 20 something babe with jet black cascading hair and milky skin from Bhopal who works in Bombay and has to her credit refused to get into acting as she ‘prefers to use her brain.’

 Meher , who has been enthralling us with non-stop accounts of partying and concerts in Mumbai was threatening to take me to a  “rave” club. “Wear something hot” she commanded conjuring intimidating images of her “gang” of nubile go getters who must have been born with a cigarette dangling from pretty and cynical mouths.

I, thinking like a Trini, of Mumbais underworld, ( dons, gangs diamond smuggling, money laundering , heroin trade) and of Dharavi, Asias second largest slum, located in central Mumbai, were over 800,000 people live. Wouldnt  Meher, a liberated well off Western educated girl with a wardrobe that consists almost exclusively of variations of the little black dress be vulnerable to predators from here? I asked her if partying was safe for a single girl in Mumbai.

“It’s the safest city in India yaar” , she had drawled when we met earlier in Bhopal, taking a deep drag of her cigarette. “See, the slums Mumbai are the most literate in India with 68% literacy. People are secure in their communities, and work damn hard. Jobs in the booming economy -  textile mills, seaport, diamond polishing, health care, information technology means even slum dwellers are now buying flat screens TV’s and everyone has a mobile. People are on their own beat to better their lives. Even the underworld Dons have a code of conduct. They don’t hassle women, elderly or children or take hard earned money. It’s against their religion and upbringing and will hurt their honour. I can come home passed out in a cab at four in the morning and no-one will touch me, not even take a paisa from me. Mumbai-ites are used to wealth. They don’t want whatever I have in my pocket”

She’s right. Mumbai, an Alpha world city, India’s financial capital, home of Bollywood, with the fourth most expensive office space worldwide, ranked seventh in the list of "Top Ten Cities for Billionaires" by Forbes magazine is bursting with opportunity.  

An events coordinator, Meher who hobnobs with Bollywood stars finds London, New York and Toronto “slow paced” compared to Mumbai. She pronounces Salman Khan  “a brand”, Shah Rukh Khan “an institution” the Bachchans “ Royalty” and south Indian star Rajinikanth “God”.

As I hang up the phone to Meher I heard an18 year old relative repeating to a demure aunt dressed in deep crimson. “Go on, spread your legs.”   I was too shocked to reprimand him and was astonished at the lack of response from the– elderly aunts, uncles, older cousins, little nieces. No one toppled a teacup or blinked. It then dawned on me. He meant ‘stretch your legs aunty, not spread” whispered my husband delighted at interpreting India to me “You are “wery vestern with a dirty mind”.

Earlier he doubled up as a young male tailor (who stitched four outfits in one night)  telling me that the “backside” needed to be altered referring to my kurta and not anatomy. The Trini husband had also by now mastered the art of the head shaking in Indian conversation which could mean that he agreed completely, disagreed violently or both at the same time.

It was my turn to laugh at him in the midst of admiring the architecture of Mumbai which hasn’t changed from my grandmothers black and white photos of the city. The Victoria terminus and Bombay University, and many of the old buildings are Gothic treats which echo Europe:  German gables, Dutch roofs, Swiss timering, Romance arches, Tudor casements, mingle in a spectacular way with traditional Indian and Mugul features. This city screams romance. And in the midst of this the Trini spots the STD signs. “Why advertise Sexually Transmitted Diseases everywhere?” he asks. They are telephone services I reply smugly.

Along with my parents we are a schizophrenic foursome of Indo Pak roots, divided to North South India, subdivided into Hindu Muslim and Trini and further scrambled by the England and Canada years.

I can just tell that my mother still believes as she did when we were children every white person she sees in this city wearing a traditional kurta or sari on the streets is a “hippie” pronounced “Happpieee”. Not that she was backward in the 70’s when  she sported neon saris crazy glasses, her hair swinging like sheet to her waistline and I would peep through a curtain and with sleepy eyes see the parents on the wooden floor, twisting to Elvis.

We couldn’t come this far without splurging on a stay at Mumbai’s Historic Taj Palace Hotel, an Indian architectural marvel , unsurpassed elegance with its silk carpets, magnificent art collection vaulted alabaster ceilings, crystal chandeliers, eclectic collection of furniture, graceful archways, dramatic cantilever stairway and onyx columns. We had been to tea there one year before the 11/26/08 attacks which killed 167 people and wounded 293, listening to Chopin by the resident pianist. Then my mother had remarked it hadn’t changed since she was a child.

 On our return this time, it appeared as if the monstrous attacks, the charred gutted rooms, the mangled bodies, broken glass and marble floors flowing with blood hadn’t ever happened. The restoration was complete but the wounds still raw. The security was tight, staff jittery, and tended to say things like they were “off duty” if you asked about that fateful day. Finally one staff member spoke, telling us of the sacrifice of the hotels manager who continues to rebuild the hotel after his wife and sons remains, charred to the crisp, yet intact, embracing another, were discovered.. So many eyes were hollow with memory, but warm with hope.

On the flight to London en route to Trinidad where an English steward roughs up my mother for not preordering a diabetic meal,. We revert to numbers on a flight, instead of people, I examine why I never feel lonely in India. Emotional voids are filled in India by ordinary Indians who base their interactions on a mass recognition of a universal human need to be respected, seen, cared for, loved. Be it the shoe shine boy, the book seller, an auto driver, you are immediately identified as a family member. Your parents are venerated. You are never sent away hungry from anyone’s home. You become sister, aunty, mummy. My husband became brother, uncle, father. You are never empty. There may be a huge chasm between the billionaires and slum dwellers but they share a sense of family, a strong sense of identity, who they are, where they came from and a work ethic that takes them in one of the fastest growing economies of the world, where they want to go. On my return people still look at me pityingly thinking of poverty of the land. I think now, clutching strands of many continents, that to allow yourself to be absorbed by this infinitely forgiving subcontinent is to feel its healing touch.

CHAPTER XIII

 

TROUBLED STATE OF AN UNFRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR

The following quote is taken out from an article written by a loyal Pakistani who is a Chief Coordinator of a Pakistani Think Tank called, 'Pak International Friendship Forum' (PIFF). He also had very close working relationship with the Pakistani establishment. He writes:

'The law and order situation in the rest of the country is also not satisfactory. The terrorists and criminal seems to be rampantly taking the population hostage. Fear and insecurity are prevalent everywhere. Influential personalities and government functionaries living in metropolitan cities have build fortress around their living places. It looks that Pakistan has gone back to the tribal period, where each family has to take up arms for their protection. The bomb blasts, suicide attacks, target killings, kidnapping for ransom, looting, arson are rampant everywhere.'

In his book "Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan", author M.J.Akbar’s investigation spans a thousand years, and an extraordinary cast: visionaries, opportunists, statesmen, tyrants, plunderers, generals, and an unusual collection of theologians, beginning with Shah Waliullah who created a ''theory of distance'' to protect ''Islamic identity'' from Hindus and Hinduism.

"There might be little hope for peace with India, given the fundamental divergence on Kashmir, but a settlement with India will help excise the jihad culture ravaging Pakistan," says Akbar.

 

I am afraid Akbar has got it all wrong. Pakistan is a nation that has been founded to be away from Hindus. Not till their hatred for India subsides can they think of any settlement. Even if India gives away Kashmir, Assam will become the ‘core’ problem and they will be back at square one.

The only way Pakistan can be saved is by re-education. God must be understood, not as anthropomorphic tyrant of the heavens, but rather as Creative Nature that in its cosmic infinity is accessible to reason, justice, and charity. As Spinoza said, godliness and humanitarianism, love and wisdom, are identical. Such love will bring peace and lasting satisfaction to Pakistanis once they dispel hatred for non-Muslims and let their women, minorities and neighbours flourish without inflicting terrorism on them.

Once Pakistan, India and Kashmir are all secular the problem of Kashmir will vanish by itself.

 

But secularizing of Pakistan is a very distant dream. For now it is sufficient to comprehend the problem of Pakistan. The world is full of idea and lessons from History. They can even learn from Tajikistan. Sermons composed of non-inflammatory verses of Koran imposed on imams, the discouragement of men growing beards — anxious Tajikistan is doing all that it can to curb the spread of Islam in this impoverished republic on the edge of Afghanistan.

 

Let us hope soon a leader can rise in Pakistan who can reclaim the country from the clutches of religion and dependence on America and China. For further deterioration of Pakistan can lead to its fragmentation.

 

 

CHAPTER XIV

 

THE NEHRU DYNASTY

Nehru, his daughter, his grand-children and  even his great-grand-children have never felt the beatitude and intellectual satisfaction wrought by the philosophy of Spinoza that virtue is its own rewards. Rather, they have lapped the three great greeds that crush man’s inner freedom – the greed for public fame, the greed for riches, and the greed for satisfaction of lust. Not till India can throw off the yoke of Nehru dynasty from its back it can lead the world in material and spiritual prosperity. 

 

 

CHAPTER XV

THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT INDIA WHICH IS FINE, FINE, FINE

I could not leave India without pausing to think that in spite of pervading corruption and wide spread poverty there is something about India which is very fine and enchanting.

Take the example of this Hindu priest. He is called Hanuman because of his devotion towards Lord Ram. He can name all the Hindu gods and goddesses in a single breath, and he performs the priest's duties at a Bihar temple with unwavering dedication - no one can tell that Sidheswar Das was born Mohammad Sadique.

Born in a Muslim family, Mohammad Sadique developed an interest in Hindu religion when he was quite young. Today, in his 80s, he is the chief priest at Ram-Janki temple in Arwal district's Sohsa village.

'I adopted Hindu faith decades ago. I look after the temple and perform prayers everyday. Now my life is a temple. I have faith in Lord Ram, I was born to worship him,' Mohammad Sadique turned Sidheswar Das told IANS over phone.

Vinay Singh, a villager, says that Sidheswar Das is respected by everyone in the village.

'He spends most of his time offering prayers and reeling off names of Hindu gods and goddesses. His devotion and commitment to look after the temple made him a saint,' he says.

Another villager, Mahesh Prasad, says that some people call him Ram devotee and others call him Hanuman for his devotion.

'Everyday, he performs all the rituals of a priest, including aarti and distributing sweets among devotees. He is a rare priest,' Prasad said.

CHAPTER XVI

Gloom, Lies and love in Britain

The news from nearby Glasgow is that former Wardlawhil Church in Rutherglen near Glasgow is a Ganesha Temple now. Before the Temple organizers purchased it Wardlawhil Church was affiliated to church of Scotland, majority church in Scotland, whose aim is “to worship God by following the teachings of Jesus Christ”. It was then renovated and refurbished into a Hindu temple.

On the opening day following the milk Abhishegam ritual of Lord Ganpathy, the statue was carried on a decorated palanquin on shoulders of several young men in procession from the City Centre to the temple hall through the main street with police escort amid sounds of chanting and music. A Hindu priest from London conducted the opening ceremony which included various ancient rituals. Prayers and bhajans were rendered to the accompaniment of manjeeras and lamp lighting.

Besides two area councilors, Consulate General of India, Ian Duncan of the Church of Scotland and his wife Jean, who were married in this former church, also attended the inaugural ceremony. Many non-Hindus also visit the temple.

Rajan Zed, President of Universal Society of Hinduism, said that it was important to pass on the concepts and traditions of Hindu spirituality to coming generations who live amid many distractions in the consumerist society and hoped that the new temple would focus on this task. Zed stressed that instead of running after materialism we should focus on inner search and realization of self and work towards achieving liberation, which is the goal of Hinduism.

Ganapathy Temple; whose aim is to "promote the ideals of Hinduism" and which is part of the South Indian Cultural Centre; reportedly plans to serve the religious, spiritual, cultural and social needs of the community. Besides prayers, sermons, lectures by spiritual leaders, naming ceremonies, mundan, weddings, festivals, car poojas, etc.; it also plans to host Indian language-art-dance-music-yoga-spirituality instruction, marriage counseling and matrimonial services, community gatherings, elderly socialization, etc. It is a member of Scottish Interfaith Council and Dr. N. V. Doraiswamy is the President, reports suggest.

Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, which means "the red valley" in Gaelic, received the status of Royal Burgh in 1126. Notable people associated with Rutherglen include novelist Alistair MacLean (The Guns of Navarone), comic actor Stan Laurel (Laurel and Hardy), comedian/actor Robbie Coltrane (Harry Potter films),  and Australian cricketer Archie Jackson.

Hinduism, oldest and third largest religion of the world, has about one billion adherents. In Hinduism, Lord Ganapathy (Ganesh) is worshipped as god of wisdom and remover of obstacles and invoked before the beginning of any major undertaking.

CHAPTER XVII
Of Human Liberation

“For the uncertain future has yet to come, with every possible variety of fortune; and him only to whom the divinity has continued happiness unto
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the end we call happy....” From Plutarch’s Solon

For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily needs, unless it so hap that luck attend upon him, and so he continue in the enjoyment of all his good things to the end of life. For many of the wealthiest men have been unfavoured of fortune, and many whose means were moderate have had excellent luck. Men of the former class excel those of the latter but in two respects; these last excel the former in many. The wealthy man is better able to content his desires, and to bear up against a sudden buffet of calamity. The other has less ability to withstand these evils (from which, however, his good luck keeps him clear), but he enjoys all these following blessings: he is whole of limb, a stranger to disease, free from misfortune, happy in his children, and comely to look upon. If, in addition to all this, he ends his life well, he is of a truth the man of whom thou art in search, the man who may rightly be termed happy.

There is a Happiness that is greater than all other happiness, a Joy that is higher than all other joy. It is the highest and happiest that it is humanly possible to be, a state of such perfect satisfaction and fulfillment that all desires evaporate into unimportance having
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nothing more to add. This state of Perfect Fulfillment simply cannot be improved upon. When a person experiences this Perfect Bliss, they do not smile or laugh – They Cry! The tears flow out of us like an excess of blessings pouring forth, like a bucket held under a waterfall, incapable of containing the abundance that keeps being added. We get a taste of this perfect happiness when we find ourselves crying at weddings. It is especially significant that the joy we feel is for the couple getting married; we have no concerns or desires for ourselves whatsoever.
We might be inclined to look at pursuit of such great happiness as a self indulgence or selfish pursuit, however the path that leads us to this ultimate state is not a path of selfishness, on the contrary as it nears its goal it increasingly becomes a path of selfless love. Remember that when we cry at weddings, it is not our personal desires that we are indulging, but rather our love for and abundant joy for the happy couple who are joining, and our personal desires have evaporated.

Dr S Radhakrishnan, philosopher President of India, gave a different perspective of the goal of life. He said the goal is joy, serenity, and not pleasure or happiness. Joy is the fulfillment of one’s nature as a human being.

According to Advaita Vedanta, the attainment of liberation coincides with the realization of the Atman (one’s personal soul) that it is identical with the Brahman, the source of all spiritual and phenomenal existence. It focuses on the knowledge of Brahman provided by traditional Vedanta literature and the teachings of its founder, Adi Shankara. Through discernment of the real and the unreal, the sadhak (practitioner) would unravel the maya and come to an understanding that the observable world is unreal and impermanent, and that consciousness is the only true existence.

A Realized person never makes mistakes because his wisdom is guided by Pure Consciousness. On account of his Unconditioned Awareness, he feels not the ego but God working in all his actions. Upon Self-realization, a devotee becomes one with the Omnipresent Cosmic Principle; consequently, he attains immunity to the influence of good and bad of material entanglements.
By remaining fixed in the trance of Self-realization, his mind is no longer disturbed by any external thing. Thus, having penetrated the dense forest of delusion, he becomes indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard. He becomes indifferent to all the books, all the castes, all the vanities of the world, and so on. At this point he has nothing left to follow, because, he has already attained Spiritual Perfection within.
He has completely relinquished all varieties of sense gratifications, which arise from mental concoctions. He is contented in his True Self, and by the True Self. He remains undisturbed even amidst the so called “filth” or “impurities” of the material world. His mind is purified andenjoys the Pure Transcendental Consciousness.
The mind of such fortunate person is perfectly in link with his God within; for he has transcended the three modes of material nature (Maya). He is situated on the platform of Pure Consciousness or Fourth State. Thus, he has his consciousness attuned to the Divine Consciousness within.
The mind’s contamination is its duality. The mind of a realized person is free of impurities of such a pluralistic phenomena. Although he lives amidst this world of pluralities, yet he remains unaffected by it. His mind possesses immunity to the effects of likes and dislikes. His mind ever remains satisfied and satiated.
By meditating on the Divine Name, egoism and ignorance are eliminated; and one’s inner being becomes overflowing with the true Ambrosial Nectar. Those who taste and are satisfied with the sublime Essence of the Lord become fearless. Those who drink it in, day and night, by the Grace of the Lord, are never again afflicted by repeated birth and death.

The person firmly established in Universal Truth does not see the body or mind as the Self; to him the body-consciousness (“I-ness”) is the product of deluded consciousness and the source of repeated pain and delusion. He sees the sorrows, pleasures, disease, fear, restlessness, old age, and death experienced by his body not pertaining to him. He sees himself the Timeless, Spaceless, and All-pervading Pure Consciousness (Self) which encompasses within Itself everything like butter in milk. He sees the whole universe strung on the One Self as the beads are strung on a thread. He sees no division between himself and others. He sees One, non-dual, Infinite Light of Consciousness as the sole Universal Reality, which is omnipotent and omnipresent and dwells in all beings equally. He sees no “I, me, mine” or “others”. He sees all beings of the Universe as his own family, deserving of his sympathy and protection. He sees no substance in objectivity, and he is beyond the feeling of “likes and dislikes”. He sees rise of no desires in his heart for objective experience. He sees the mirage-like world appearance as unreal, whose reality is the reality of its Substratum which is Unconditioned Consciousness. He remains peaceful and pure at heart, but outwardly he engages in appropriate actions but remain unattached and unaffected by them like a lotus flower. When he wakes up the whole Universe wakes up with him, when he sleeps the whole Universe sleeps with him, and when he eats the whole Universe eats with him.

An intuitively wise person possesses two formidable lines of defense in his disposal. First, he keeps the senses under complete control and check. This is his outer defense line. Second, he keeps his consciousness focused on God. This is the inner defense line. This outer and inner control keeps him spiritually fit, unwavering, and steady.

He keeps his mind in God-Consciousness. He uses his speech glorifying the Divine Name, his hands doing the Spiritual Service, his ears hearing the Divine Glories, his eyes seeing the omnipresence of the Divine, his body serving the devotees, his tongue tasting the Nectar of the Divine Name, his nose smelling the fragrance of the Divine Name within, his legs traveling on the road to link with God, his head and false ego in offering his obeisance unto the Divine within, and so on. He has only one desire — to fulfill the desire of the Divine! Thus, the senses can be fully controlled only by the strength of our sincere devotional service to God within.