Reclaiming India

The land we know today as India was undoubtedly the centre of the most ancient global civilisation from which knowledge and spiritual practices flowed. Their knowledge civilised the world only to be corrupted by the creation of the new gods to greed and selfishness.

Some time back in the distant past, people thought about where they lived, their place in the universe and our confinement to this planet. Consequently they began exploring and discovered a great many aspects of our remote corners within our galaxy and our universe.

The people for the most part discovered that by living a life according to Sanatana Dharma and maintaining a personal spiritual practice, they became co-creators on this planet and unlocked rivers of joy within themselves.

Lets not pretend that everything was perfect, it is probable there was always some competition over resources and ideologies which were resolved fairly amicably with the famous Mahabharata war being one of the greatest inconsistencies. Perhaps it was a consequence of this war that Gotama saw the solution to suffering and consequently sought out a solution because at that time what people call as Hinduism will buy more correctly termed as Sanatana Dharma was already corrupted by patriarchal capitalism that may have evolved in the north-west, perhaps Persia or further up into central Asia.

Capitalism per se within Sanatana Dharma appears to have been fairly benign and a practical solution to record-keeping between merchants, traders, employers and their workers as industrialisation began to take place and agriculture intensified. The real punchline here is that at some point perhaps around or before 8000 BC, men began to find they could use their newfound power and wealth to achieve their material dreams.

This bought about what I term as patriarchal capitalism and this is what is shaping our modern world. It created the ideological split within Vedanta they gave birth to Avesta which in turn spawned the world's religions and the majority of our sociopolitical ills. Those ills were initially rather small, breakaway kingdoms, banditry and overtime a more organised economy which in India was likely based around the temples with administrators who are overtime perhaps became King's dealing with the political infrastructure but protecting the population and the developing temple culture that was primarily democratic and aimed to give every individual the freedom to participate in society and most importantly explore the depths of their inner world or humanity.

Outside of India, materialism was embraced, religions were created as tools of control and looking back through history is not too hard to see the vast amount of conflict that has taken place in the name of pure selfishness for someone else's positions or as part of an ideological crusade as happened with Christianity and Islam.

By the time Islam came crashing through the gates of India, the country was weakened by patriarchal capitalism, the Buddha had clarified a somewhat less complex path to liberation but the Buddhists had no means of defence and their structure was somewhat authoritarian so that when the heads of the priests roled, there was no one to instruct the followers.

Conversely within Sanatana Dharma, despite the corruption bought about through patriarchal capitalism, there were very effective armies created to defend the Dharma because they understood how valuable that was for a great many reasons which I will not go into here.

By the time the Europeans began arriving, Hindu culture was in a very sad state with a great deal of corruption and abuse of power which created poverty and incentivised masses of people to convert to Islam which is eminently portrayed in some of Tagore's writings.

The sense of 'European Enlightenment' was taken up by the materialistically educated giving rise to the anti-Hindu Dharma and anti-Brahman movements which continue to trample over the nation today. When partition took place, most of the original India had already been badly damaged and even lost within some sectors of society.

However all is not lost.

Saffronisation

Given the suffering resulting from patriarchal capitalism, corporatism and materialistic ideologies including Christianity, Islam, communism et cetera, those Indians with a sense of possibility, those who maintain some kind of personal sadhana or in other ways for persue wisdom have a knowledge that the modern world with all its isms and political ideologies in addition to attempting to destroy the last remnants of Dharma is also destroying life on planet Earth.

Some only aware of one aspect, few are aware of all aspects and they are far too numerous to list in full other than to say they are all aberrations of consciousness hinged on belief in non-existent phenomenon. Unfortunately those seeking change and a return to sanity are often at odds with each other because they feel they have too push their own individual bandwagon.

So this is a time for working together. The Modi government is clearly the best thing that has happened to India in modern history therefore everyone needs to wholeheartedly support the government and collectively lobby the government to take sensible steps to do more towards environmental conservation, terminating the funding for the so-called minority religions and not only putting temple assets back into local control, but correcting the narrative of history and teaching the basic elements of spirituality in schools.

Before some of that can happen, there needs to be a clarification or a simplification of what Dharma is and this is a subject I have given a deal of thought, see some of my other writing. But it is going to take many generations for this restorative process to play out, so this work is for justice, social and political equity.