I missed the actual ceremony but I did watch a lot of the scenes before and after , like many of my fellow countrymen and women. I also read the report that more Indians watched the Kate -Will wedding on TV than the Brits. Which is understandable . There just are more English knowing Indians than there are Brits. There just are more TV viewing Indians than English folk. All because there just are more Indian men , women & children on the planet than English men, women & children.
We easily outnumber them and, despite the Independence struggle and the Independence, we are still overwhelmingly in love with them, their Queen, their Prince of Wales, their People’s Princess and her sons who are like our princes . We follow anyone they date, marry or not marry. Given a choice , we would all want to be them, the British i.e. In the second decade of the 21st century with so many Indians living out there in London, Oxford and various other parts of Britain the two centuries old secret fantasy of Indians has become a reality .
The answer to why Indians , all post-colonials for that matter, are so enamoured of everything British lies in the one expression which is now made so much of by thinkers and speakers on international relations, namely ‘Soft Power’. Long before Harvard Professor, Joseph .S. Nye coined it and developed the concept in 1990 , the British rulers had perfected the art of using soft power ‘to attract and co-opt’, as Nye puts it, the subject nations to want what they (the British ) wanted.
The introduction of English education in India and making English the official language of the country were master strokes in the power play of the soft variety. Beginning with the nursery rhymes which elite Indian parents took pains to teach their children, English poetry and literature worked as weapons of mass conversion of the Indian psyche to an English way of thinking , feeling and imagining. British history from its very origins and the English language from its origins in the the Anglo Saxon times were part of the syllabus for students majoring in English literature. I know it from the inside as I had gone through it all. And I must add I have benefited by it, both materially and psychologically.
Various other British systems and practices, manners, cuisine, cricket et al which can be put into the soft power basket made their way into the subcontinent’s physical as well as mental space. More than one hundred years of such infusion could not be shaken off at midnight , August 1947. We continue/d to be part of the Commonwealth of Nations . The British Council ensures the maintenance of the influence, though the libraries, alas, are in the withdrawal mode right now.
We have out-Britished the British in our passion and flair for cricket. We write more innovative fiction in English than the English novelists and beat them at the prize winning game . In parliamentary democracy, strangely, reverse osmosis seems to be taking place. Reports suggest their MPs and Ministers out there are as as bad as ours in the matter of spending and thieving public funds.
But they have the monarchy still, far removed from muck of this kind. The Queen , personally , is above board, despite her siblings and progeny turning Buckingham Palace into F.....gham palace. I suggest that the Commonwealth of Nations honour her with a medal for standing the Duke Of Edinburgh, his foot ever in his mouth, for 63 long years. That is Right Royal Endurance . We, Indians salute that regardless of any power, hard or soft !
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Help thou, Mine Unbelief !
‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy’, said Wordsworth. One sort of heaven is when you are able to have complete trust in someone/ something.. The infant trusts its mother blindly , unquestioningly , fully. The same trust it is able to transfer to the concept of God for a few more years. Lucky and blessed are those who can retain this blissful, childlike state throughout their lives. Well, I don’t think I am one of them. I have been oscillating between belief and unbelief all my adult life. I do need belief to carry on with life even on a day to day level. I do pray , beg for this and that. My petitionary prayers spring not out of a love of God but out of a love of myself. And when my prayers are answered I thank the Lord like anyone else does .
But faith of the kind that moved the millions who wept at the passing away of Sathya Sai Baba is alien to me. I have seen Baba once . I forget the exact year. It was a balcony appearance in the palace near Govt. Victoria College, Palakkad. I wasn’t too moved, to be honest . I didn’t know much about him , then. Baba was young , in his forties , may be. And I was a lot younger, an adolescent very much under the influence of rationalistic writings like those of Bertrand Russell. In those days of utter ignorance and vainglory, I enjoyed sporting an atheistic/ skeptical façade.
Do I know better now ? Not too sure . But certainly , I have stopped being cynical and dismissive about the spiritually evolved souls like Baba. Magicians assert that the miracles that Sai Baba performed can be replicated by them. They could be right, too. Quite likely , the residual rationalist in me whispers , that he was an adept illusionist , who could , reportedly, produce gold chains and vibhuti from the air. But Puttaparthi is no illusion and no magician can replicate that miracle. That ultra modern township which he crafted out of a humble village in the back of beyond is the monument to the Satya or the Truth of Satya Sai Baba.
In fact, all the institutions and projects that have been functioning under his inspiration bear witness to that Satya. The Dharmakshetra in Mumbai is one such centre . Baba’s devotees conduct various programmes for students there. I was privileged to accompany a few of my students to this centre , along with my colleague , Prof. Rajasree who is a Sai Bhakta. The experience was memorable on two counts. One was, of course , the spiritual high that was ensured by the music and the talk. The other was the taste of the food - breakfast & lunch- all home cooked and brought to the venue by the women devotees. I mention this in all solemnity.
To the hungry, God comes in the form of food. It was a cardinal rule with Baba, explained my friend, that his disciples should see to it that all those who come to his programmes anywhere should return with their stomachs’ need met satisfactorily. The way to the heart is through the stomach ! The practical saints know this. Satya Sai Baba was a practical saint who empathized with the hunger and thirst of ordinary mortals. After tasting that manna at Dharmakshetra , I must have become half a devotee. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this.
Total devotion which would mean total surrender , as I had confessed at the outset , is, alas, beyond me. It is one of the beautiful ironies of the religious life that total surrender to God or the god-like Guru is liberation. The liberation from doubts that Arjuna attained in Kurukshetra when he witnessed the Cosmic Form , the Viswa roopa , of Krishna. The liberation that St. Thomas , the Doubting Thomas , experienced when he could see and touch Jesus after the Resurrection couldn’t have been different. I am still waiting for that ‘ Lord, my God!’moment.
Published in the City Journal ( title changed to the somewhat tame Make Me Believe ) on 4th May ,2011.
But faith of the kind that moved the millions who wept at the passing away of Sathya Sai Baba is alien to me. I have seen Baba once . I forget the exact year. It was a balcony appearance in the palace near Govt. Victoria College, Palakkad. I wasn’t too moved, to be honest . I didn’t know much about him , then. Baba was young , in his forties , may be. And I was a lot younger, an adolescent very much under the influence of rationalistic writings like those of Bertrand Russell. In those days of utter ignorance and vainglory, I enjoyed sporting an atheistic/ skeptical façade.
Do I know better now ? Not too sure . But certainly , I have stopped being cynical and dismissive about the spiritually evolved souls like Baba. Magicians assert that the miracles that Sai Baba performed can be replicated by them. They could be right, too. Quite likely , the residual rationalist in me whispers , that he was an adept illusionist , who could , reportedly, produce gold chains and vibhuti from the air. But Puttaparthi is no illusion and no magician can replicate that miracle. That ultra modern township which he crafted out of a humble village in the back of beyond is the monument to the Satya or the Truth of Satya Sai Baba.
In fact, all the institutions and projects that have been functioning under his inspiration bear witness to that Satya. The Dharmakshetra in Mumbai is one such centre . Baba’s devotees conduct various programmes for students there. I was privileged to accompany a few of my students to this centre , along with my colleague , Prof. Rajasree who is a Sai Bhakta. The experience was memorable on two counts. One was, of course , the spiritual high that was ensured by the music and the talk. The other was the taste of the food - breakfast & lunch- all home cooked and brought to the venue by the women devotees. I mention this in all solemnity.
To the hungry, God comes in the form of food. It was a cardinal rule with Baba, explained my friend, that his disciples should see to it that all those who come to his programmes anywhere should return with their stomachs’ need met satisfactorily. The way to the heart is through the stomach ! The practical saints know this. Satya Sai Baba was a practical saint who empathized with the hunger and thirst of ordinary mortals. After tasting that manna at Dharmakshetra , I must have become half a devotee. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this.
Total devotion which would mean total surrender , as I had confessed at the outset , is, alas, beyond me. It is one of the beautiful ironies of the religious life that total surrender to God or the god-like Guru is liberation. The liberation from doubts that Arjuna attained in Kurukshetra when he witnessed the Cosmic Form , the Viswa roopa , of Krishna. The liberation that St. Thomas , the Doubting Thomas , experienced when he could see and touch Jesus after the Resurrection couldn’t have been different. I am still waiting for that ‘ Lord, my God!’moment.
Published in the City Journal ( title changed to the somewhat tame Make Me Believe ) on 4th May ,2011.
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