When India is the land of spirituality why was it overrun by so many invaders – why does it still have a colonial mentality?

Transcript

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Thank you.
Coming to this question if India was a land of spirituality why was it over run by foreign invaders for so many centuries and why is the colonial mentality even now there yes spirituality is something which has to be understood and applied properly if it is not understood and applied properly then it can be there can be an appearance of spirituality but the substance of spirituality may not be there so in India when we talk about India as a land of spirituality it is primarily the culture there is the cultural aspect of spirituality, there is the intellectual or philosophical aspect of spirituality and there is the social aspect of spirituality culturally we can take the practices going to temple, have puja, have ashram, they are cultural there is the philosophical and intellectual aspect where we understand the wisdom and the social aspect is ok how is this to be applied in our social interactions so in India over the centuries the Bhagavad Gita talks about a system of social division called Varanashram Varanashram is the division of society according to innate psychological dispositions there are some people who are intellectual some people who are managers some people who are business people some people who are general assistants this over the centuries became distorted as the caste system now the difference between what the Bhagavad Gita teaches as Varanashram and what is called the caste system is that the Bhagavad Gita teaches that this division is based on chatur varanam maya srishtam guna karmal bhaagasya it is based on qualities and activities but the caste system that was present in India that was primarily based on birth so a person who is the son of a brahmana thinks that I am a brahmana say tomorrow I am going by flight to India if I ask who is driving the flight so and so person is he a pilot? is he a train pilot? no he is the son of a train pilot well is he a train pilot? no no he is the son of a train pilot I don’t want to go that plane just the son of a train pilot is not necessarily a train pilot so what happened was this whole idea came up in India that just because somebody is born in a particular caste they automatically belong to that caste, they have the power and privilege of that caste so the two primary upper castes the brahmanas and the kshatriyas both of them became corrupted by this idea so brahmanas are the storehouse of intellectual power and the kshatriyas are meant to be the storehouse of social or political power so both of them to some extent became corrupted and because of that the kshatriyas instead of using their power and position to protect others they often got caught in petty distinctions and when invaders came from outside they were just caught in their own petty conflicts and they were overrun so it is not so much the spirituality that caused the problem it is the partial application of spirituality by which rather than the spiritual understanding of life fostering cooperation it started fostering entitlement mentality and started fostering discrimination having said that we have to recognize that when people are spiritual the spirituality is meant to lead to all round contribution so although at one level India politically was overrun by others but still throughout the centuries India kept making its contribution even when the Britishers came to India they came because India was still prosperous although there was Islamic rule for starting from something like 11th century we can say 7th century it was there still India was prosperous so the core spirituality that was there in terms of people having a spiritual culture that kept India prosperous even when the politically it was overrun by others there were plunders but because the culture was itself spiritual it kept resurfacing, the prosperity kept coming but when the British rule started the attack was not just social or political the attack was also on the culture many of the Islamic invaders they destroyed temples but the Britishers they often destroyed the faith that made people go to the temples and that attack was much more insidious, now again when I say either Islamists, Islamic invaders or Britishers I am not putting one label on everyone even among Muslim rulers there were many who were liberal and broad minded even among Britishers there were many who thought that actually we are doing good to India, they were thinking that India is primitive and we are civilizing so but yes if you look at the overall influence it was a corrosive influence and especially by the by the time India got independence India developed a very very colonial mentality on August 15, 1947 India independently became dependent on the west India got its independence we became politically independent but still we remained culturally dependent and because of that the whole idea was that till recently if you see India cricket is considered national game of India but actually India is not a cricket mad country, India is a international cricket mad country, if a cricketer performs very well in a domestic tournament, nobody cares if a player performs well in an international tournament, oh now we are so great so that that mentality has been fostered I would say largely because of the colonial education that came during the 150 to 100 years and unfortunately after independence also we did not really change course, we followed more or less the same trajectory although we had political independence so that’s why that has not changed, now if you see there is a book written by Philip Goldman it’s called American Veda the book is about how Indian spirituality penetrated in the American heartland talks about how so many spiritual teachers went from India and now yoga has become mainstream being vegan has become very popular meditation is also very popular, so many people in the west are now choosing to be cremated rather than buried so many of the cultural practices of India have gone to the west and from the west when they are coming to India we are taking it up more this is just unfortunate but as India progresses as we start recognizing the value of our spirituality based non-cultural factors but on intellectual factors so what has happened is because our cultural faith was destroyed by the education coming from the west so we started thinking that everything western is better, so when the Indian spirituality is presented from the west, oh it’s good but when we start getting spiritual education when our faith is not just cultural it’s also intellectual then we don’t need our culture to be vindicated by the west to accept it when we understand it intellectually and then we evaluate it and we appreciate it then if we take it up it will be based not on what the world is appreciating it but because it has its intrinsic worth so in India unfortunately the spiritual wisdom of the Vedic literature is not taught at all even if it is not to be taught as a religious text it could at least be taught as a wisdom text this is a book of wisdom the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads they are books of wisdom that originated in India and we may not believe them as absolute truths but at least what they are taught needs to be taught, what they are teaching needs to be taught, unfortunately because that is not happening so we don’t have that intellectual access way to our own traditions so the more we make that intellectual access way available for people then instead of this being external reference needed for applying for appreciating what we have we can become more spiritually self-confident about our own tradition does that answer your question? it does and in fact I was asking