The Monk’s Podcast 65 with Govinda Prabhu – Centralization, Decentralization and Dharma

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Centralization, Decentralization and Dharma – The Monk’s Podcast with Govinda Prabhu

Summary from 2.00.08:
We were talking about how democracy represents humanity in the system of governance. And then you as you said that that’s what we had in India because there was knowledge at the top and at the bottom. Whether it is like epics like Rama being rendered in vernacular languages, or even knowledge base, working knowledge of astronomy, and other meteorology and other things, it was there with the experts and the common people. So, this democratization of knowledge which can say which one said represents power, this was there in various fields systems of governance, but also they were distributed. So, every village was self-sufficient, and every village had its even within the village, each community, they had their own hierarchy. They had their own hierarchy, and people could rise and succeed and get their own sense of identity there. So, the king there was capitalism in the sense that the Kings had power, but the King’s power was not making laws which apply for everyone but preserving laws which were defined by different people according to their particular local systems or local customs. So, we had, we could say almost the left values at the bottom level and right values at the top level.

And the idea of taking individual responsibility. The beautiful point, you said that our limitations are temporary, but our potentials are our own, they’re lasting, because at the core, we are souls. So, with this understanding, there is the assertion of the individual. the dignity of the individual was also part of not just something that came with Judeo Christian tradition, but it was there in our tradition also and that’s how we have been great saintly people were targeted, victimized, and they didn’t expect some rescuer to come but they withstood it and they themselves rose to glory. And whenever there was because power was decentralized, whenever there was a winner, there was abuse of power. Also, it was more of an individual abusing power, rather than a whole system, exploiting someone. And that’s why we have the works of the persecuted saints also available as a legacy today, it’s not wiped out.

We discuss elaborately about the caste system. So, the caste system is perceived as discriminatory, but within each caste also people had their dignity. And like you said that Guha was a king, although he was in one sense an outcast, and Nand Maharaj was a King. So, Manu says that everyone should be independent, and people had their respect. So, to some extent, the imposition of an external definition of success leads to the perception the caste system was very discriminatory, but the caste system gave autonomy for people to succeed along different channels. And to the extent there is discrimination we discussed especially against those who are handling, say human excreta. So that was unfortunate. But even that was not to that great extent, because the systems of sanitation were different in the past. And that is also exaggerated as far as then whatever his condition is there, that’s a universal human evil that every country and every civilization is prone to. So, we can’t label a civilization as bad, we can look at the bad in the civilization and see how it can be rectified. And there was a tradition of reform quite actively in India also whenever customs discrimination came up.

And then we compare, say with respect to the left and the right, so the left has become very influential. You said the left can be more violent than even terrorists because it’s very subtle and sophisticated. So they put family members against family members. The family in the system of tyranny or nation as a state system of tyranny, religion as a system of tyranny in replacing that they themselves centralize power. So quite often, the left starts with love for the poor, but it ends up with hatred for the wealthy. And something that is driven by hatred, that cannot really solve any problems that will only aggravate problems. Even if some people are virtuous within that, and they really redistribute wealth and redistribute things well, they’ll be replaced by someone else who will be tyrannical. So in that sense, distributing is evoking individuals to grow by taking responsibility. That’s the way forward.

We discuss why the left becomes so powerful. One major reason is they had a long term vision by which they penetrated the centres of influence, the universities, the media, and we as a dharmic traditions, we could say the right focused more on the visible centres of piety like temples. And there was also the separation of the priesthood from scholarship. And so that’s why when now the younger generation as they go into the education system, they may have some faith which they got from there, as you said, right wing, they are right to right wing faith, but they have left wing values or psychologically, they are like that. And that becomes very disruptive. So, the way ahead will be that we see that our internet Hindus who are coming up and there are people from the STEM fields, who are now awakening and trying to understand and share dharma. And, we as individuals, we understand that the battle between good and evil is eternal. And we must play our part in that. And if we keep playing our part, not with the goal of eliminating evil, we don’t we don’t know. It’s not like violence to destroy, but we want to have justice so that there is a fair representation of things. So, if we do our part, then Krishna has a plan and additional users in his plan the way that he sees fit.

And then the last one more important than charismatic gurus are, say, rational presentation of spirituality, from the top to the bottom systematically that rationality can be taught and that can lead to some overall change in society. Anything you’d like to add or conclude?

End of transcription.

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna, going through. Welcome back to the Monks Podcast.
We had a very stimulating discussion last time. So I thought we could continue that discussion or that theme today. But in a broader context, that there are many devotees appreciated the discussion last time and we could apply this to the broader issue of governing society and what was last time we differentiated with Dharma and Bhakti.
So how would the Dharmic principles be applied in the broader aspect of governing society? We thought we could discuss on that. Is that okay with you? Yes, yes. My pleasure.
Love to discuss on this. Thank you. So, now I was, I’ll start with some context and then we can move forward.
So what you’re telling about Dharma and Bhakti being different. So recently, I was hearing one conversation with one Jewish rabbi, whom I had met when I was in London. So he was asked this question that will, if Muslims become very influential in England, will they be able to implement Sharia law in London? So he says that cannot happen because what he said is democracy is the institutionalization of humility in governance.
Now, what he meant by that is, there’s three religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. He said, throughout history, they have been having conflicts. But in the last few hundred years, wherever there is a democratic government, they have been able to live with reasonable peacefulness.
And the reason now we could debate the historical facts, but I’ll just tell the thesis and then I’ll how we draw, how I connected that with our discussion. So he said that the government in the democratic setting basically doesn’t tell people how to live morally or religiously. It only tells them how to live peacefully and cooperatively.
What is required for maintaining social order. And so in that sense, there is no government overreach into people’s personal lives. So their faith is their personal matter.
And when the government has the humility to do that, then that government can be acceptable to various religions. But as soon as the government starts legislating people’s beliefs and practices, then there will be a backlash and it will lead to conflicts. So now, whether this is a virtue of democracy or whether it is a virtue of secularism or it is whatever be the name we use for it, that’s a different thing.
But like last time you mentioned that even in our tradition, when Yudhishthira Maharaj was ruling, there are Vaishnavas and there are Shaivites. So that the government shouldn’t have too much of a reach. That seems to be a principle that is significantly similar to the principles that are there in Dharma.
Would you like to use this as a starting point for our discussion? Any thoughts on this? Great, great point. What you discussed, what this Western Rabbi was discussing, they have reached to this understanding based upon the consequential reality rather than the cause reality. Because if you study Christianity, it was very much involved in the governance, especially in European country.
But during the Renaissance, they realized because there was a clash, especially with the Roman Catholic Christian by the people of logic and reason. I remember listening to one debate, there was a debate amongst the Shakespearean scholars and the why Shakespeare is so relevant because he created a clash between the concept of Dharma only in his writings. So therefore he made people think.
So when they ask this question, what is the difference between Biblical thought and Shakespearean thought? Now Shakespeare is not an Atheist. No, he is not an Atheist. He did not bring religion into his writing.
That’s interesting. At the same time, he did not officially say that I’m an Atheist because he was not. Yeah, I think he created a broader perspective.
There was some 500th anniversary of Shakespeare or something like that. So I saw many Catholics were trying to prove how Shakespeare was a Catholic, but it requires a lot of stretch. You cannot explicitly say that he’s Catholic.
So his position is not, is a little ambiguous. What are you saying exactly? Yeah. So because, because any intellectual and any sensitive person will always remain abstract rather than concrete because concreteness gives rise to exclusivity.
It’s overconfident. Okay. So therefore, what he said, very interesting, he said, Shakespeare makes you think and Bible tells you what to think.
Striking. You know, I have heard the same point as a difference between, sorry, as a difference between indoctrination and education. What to think and education teaches you how to think.
Yeah. So therefore, therefore, because, because one good part of the reasonable intellectual of the Western world, they eventually tried to reconcile between, you know, the Evangelic faith and the Renaissance movement. Okay.
No. So they had that critical thinking. So that is in regards to the, the elite intellectual group.
Right. Okay. So therefore, what he’s saying makes a lot of sense in regards to in the Western world, democracy will always exist because no people will not accept.
Another principle, because the, as you said, since ages, there is a clash between these three religions. And I, in the government, in the governance principle, Islam will never take over, but life is not only in the government sector. Life also happens in the street.
Life also happens in the colony. Life also happens. Therefore, the laws are not only implemented up to down.
It also happens in the street also. So for the good governance of the people, you know, people should take this kind of threat seriously also. If you ask anybody, what is Pakistan for that matter? Is it a democracy or is it religion based? To the international world, they say Pakistan is a democratic country, but in the streets of Pakistan, it is not like that.
So therefore, sometimes the intellectuals can always say, no, no, that will never happen. That is the truth also. That will never happen in the government sector, but it happens on the social sector also.
Therefore, this is the beauty of Dharma. Like today, I was discussing with somebody about astronomy. Now, when we study, when we say astronomy, what is astronomy? Astronomy is a very classical, you know, very elitist scientific understanding, whether in the Eastern philosophy or Western philosophy.
In the Eastern world, we study Aryabhatta, Bhaskaracharya, Varahamihira. So that is the classical one. At the same time, as I was saying that these classical literatures were existing among the top, you know, we call them Pandit, but the same astronomy also existed in the social order also.
Fishermen knew, you know, by the movement of the moon and the sun, they would do fishing. By the movement of the stars, they would recognize. So they didn’t know the classical language, but they had the knowledge of the classical impact in their own background also.
The farmer also, you know, by seeing the different design of the sky, you would actually tell, okay, rains would come like this. Now also, if you’re going to talk to the shepherds, talk to the farmers, talk to the fishermen also, they were able to do. So there was a balance between the classical literature and also the village literature.
Like Ramayana is there in Sanskrit, Valmiki Ramayana. But the same Valmiki Ramayana was also spoken by the people in the forest, like Gond language, the Gond Bhasha. They knew almost the same number of shlokas, not in Sanskrit, but in their colloquial language.
Okay. Okay. So what you’re saying, sorry, if I just understand that flow of thought, what you’re saying is that we talked about the role of government or how change happens.
So we might have at the level of abstract ideas that we are not going to be sectarian at the level of governance, but at the ground level, also sectarianism has to be prevented or some might gain power. And then you are contrasting that in India, there was that translation of knowledge from the top to the down that working knowledge was available for everyone. And maybe evolved technical knowledge was available for the scholars.
So are you saying that similarly? Okay. So are you saying similarly that that ethos of broad mindedness or inclusion inclusiveness that was there from top to bottom, but whereas in the West, it is, even if it is there, it’s only at the top, not at the bottom. Is that what you’re trying to say? Yes.
Yes. Yes. Okay.
Yeah. This is interesting. It should be available to everybody in the streets also in the colonies also, you know, the same knowledge, what they’re discussing in their refined, you know, classical intellectual language, I should be discussing with the fishermen also.
And the fishermen could discuss. I remember one of our friend, he was traveling in a boat. It was a night ride, three, four hours.
So then this devotee friend only said, oh no, I want to get up at four o’clock. How is it possible? So I said, don’t worry, because I’ll wake you up at four o’clock. And he had no wristwatch, nothing.
And this boatman exactly at four o’clock here woke him up. He said, how did you do that? He said stars. Okay.
So this was a very common sense knowledge, a very common sense knowledge. So therefore, the fisherman was not envious of Varahamihira because Varahamihira did not matter to him. Interesting.
So, you know, before I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness, I used to read Gandhiji quite a bit. So one of the things he wrote, one of his books was the Home Rule Movement, where he home rule, he talked about anti-industrialization and things like that. So one of the things he said that India was filled with self-sufficient village communities.
And in that sense, who was in power, they didn’t matter so much because each village was its self-contained units. But after the British came and they because of colonization, they brought out industrialization, they disrupted the self-sufficient village unit. So, and that if India has to sustain itself, again, we have to create that self-sufficiency.
That was his vision. So this is also an example of say, we could say, the government was not interfering in people’s ordinary lives. So people at the village level had what they needed and the state, the country or state at the top level, they had what they needed.
So, but it was, although there was connected, it was not that the state was interfering here or the village, for the village, the king was not really that consequential. Is it like that to some extent, something similar? Yes, absolutely. And in every aspect, it was not only governance aspect.
Like for example, in Bharat, like when we say, all the classical literatures were controlled by only the Brahmin Akka class, they would give. But if you study all over India, from Tulsidas to Chokamela, Chokamela, you know, and Sautamali, then Bhaktakumbha, then Shafard Kanagdas, Akka Mahadevi, all these people, they were not coming from any classical Sanskrit background. They came from their regional language, speaking a village language, but they had the same kind of influence over people as the scholarly great people like Shankaracharya, Madhvacharya, Nimbarka.
I can tell you, Madhvacharya is a figure in Karnataka. I didn’t know about him till I studied in the ninth chapter, in the ninth standard. But I knew about Kanagdas who was supposed to be coming in that line, Shafard, more than Madhvacharya also.
So they created greater influence coming from the lower ladder than these great people coming from the higher ladder. So there was no competition. They did not compete with this order and these people did not compete with them.
They were able to coexist and contribute. That’s striking. One of the ways, and I speak with Western audiences and they often ask about the caste system in India.
So that is often seen as a stigma of India. So one way I’ve explained this is that more than segregation or discrimination, it was a system for providing different people, different definitions of success and different ladders to climb. So a Brahmana was not really competing with a Vaishya.
They had their own ladder to climb. And if they climbed on that ladder, they would be successful and they would get respect in their social circles. So you’re talking about this, what could apply in Varanashram? You’re saying it applies in various fields and each person would get their own sphere of influence and they would influence in that area.
Yeah. Therefore there was a greater interaction, not in the party like system. There was a greater interaction in their regular interaction.
Like, you know, we call it as a Bhagar. You know, like how many people nowadays, those educated class, you know, last time we were discussing about this, the left, the socialist or the communist, you know, or the left liberal. Today, they are simply activists bringing revolution on the street and the college campus.
But the original socialists were interacting with the real world. You know, how many elitists go and interact with the fishermen? They will eat fish. How many will interact with a butcher? They will eat beef.
They will eat goat. But you’ll never find a so-called elitist interacting with such people. So there was a greater interaction by a high class people, like talking a barber for that matter, a village barber.
He can’t talk to you because you don’t speak his language. You speak English. I speak English.
He doesn’t speak English. And therefore there’s a distance, you know, but the point is, previously a king would disguise himself. It is not a story.
King means anybody would go in a normal setting and interact with a barber, a cobbler also. There was a distinction in regards to your lifestyle, but there was no distinction in regards to interaction. I guarantee you, you bring out the statistics.
They’ll bring the fishermen on the road. They’ll bring the farmers on the road. They’ll bring the cobblers on the road for doing protest, but not interacting with them.
That’s beautifully put. So what you said about the leftists. So if we talk about in the same of the governmental outreach that the left uses the powerless or the disempowered as an excuse for empowering themselves.
Very good. Then they are so powerless. They are so they have no wealth.
So then what should we do? We will control the wealth from the wealthy and we will give it to the poor, but in the name of giving it to the poor, they become powerful. So in that sense, they, so we could say that this at one level, the left, the left’s ideology, while it seems to be compassionate in terms of wanting to care for other people, but very easily it can become a tool for, for self righteously claiming power. Isn’t it? And that’s why, as you said that there are these people who are protesting in the name of saying, I’m in America, people are protesting in the name of blacks, but then their protests are harming blacks also.
Isn’t it like the blacks businesses are getting, getting disrupted and if police is defunded, blacks, black people are getting more crimes and things like that. So in that sense, yeah, please the thoughts on this. So it’s a very interesting one.
Therefore, therefore there is a difference between using them and empowering them. The socialist movement uses them rather than empowering them. Rather than making them confident, they make them hateful.
In Sanskrit, we call sabiman and abiman. No, irsha and vishwas. No, if you give me vishwas, if you give me confidence, then I don’t need to compare with others.
But if you give me hatred, I will only grow based upon hating other person. Powerfully put. Therefore, therefore my protest will only happen on the street.
Therefore, if you study the history of India’s communism also, you know, there were some communistic people, they were communist in regards to psychology, not in regards to philosophy. They were sensitive in regards to people’s suffering and eventually such communists were thrown out of the communist party and one of them was Dangay. If you study his life, he was a Maharashtrian only.
No, I’ve heard about Dangay. Because he basically was not an activist. He was doing activity with the so-called downtrodden people.
He was allowing them to grow. When you allow them to grow, why would they take part in the protest? They would take part in the evolvement and growth of their own life. Therefore, this whole concept of protest, any person who agrees for making a protest on the street, protest on the college campus and anybody supports them, they’re basically mild, envious, you know, aggressive, violent people.
They are doing Kranti, which is destructive in nature, not constructive in nature. That’s so true. Now, one of the strongest critics of communism that I have read is that communism starts with love for the poor, but ends with hatred for the rich.
Let’s start with this. But so what you said also, now some people say that what is the now Stalin, Lenin or Mao Zedong, what they did was not actually communism. That was deviation from communism.
But now we see that billions and millions of people were killed by the government because of anybody who was prosperous. But then the problem comes that you say that they implemented it wrong. But even if, say, there is one person who is truly virtuous, that person gains that power and he truly tries to redistribute wealth equitably.
But the question is, how long will that person stay in power? There’ll be so many other people who can pull him down and the next person could be very vicious. So even if exceptionally somebody is virtuous, so instead of trying to concentrate power in any one person who is a great benefactor for everyone, the idea is empower people to develop themselves. Like instead of centering power in one virtuous person, we try to, we try to inculcate virtue in everyone and then they become empowered and they take responsibility for their lives.
Is that because, yeah, because, because Dharmic philosophy believes in everybody’s potential, you know, does not the Dharmic philosophy believes in eternal potential of the person, you know, as against his limitation. His limitation is temporary. His potential is permanent.
Beautiful. You know, his pain is circumstantial, but his pleasure is constitutional. So therefore, wherever knowledge comes from, you know, wherever knowledge comes from, one of the greatest statement Chanakya said, you know, pick up the gold from the garbage because there is a gold in garbage.
In our Kannada, there is a saying, there is a Kannada, there is a saying called as Thippelli Thimmappa. Thippe means garbage and Thimmappa means Lord Balaji. So therefore, when you, when you throw garbage, if you maintain the garbage properly from there comes the gold of great powerful manure, which will make your land very fertile.
So even an ordinary human being never ever conceived the concept of eternal condemnation. So Tukaram Maharaj wrote beautiful poem. Yes, there may be some priestly class individuals stopped him, but never collective.
I can give you the history. The Brahmana association was never happened till 1960 or 1970. Because you cannot make Brahmanas united.
United means you’ll say they are intellectual. United means like, like, like they are all together and going on the street doing a strike. And I’m not a Brahmana.
I’m not born in a Brahman family so that I’m not defending my own caste like that. You’ll never historically, you can never find like how there is, you know, every community has an organization. They come to the street.
The political leaders bring them to the street, but you’ll never find in the history of India, the collective Brahmanas came together to control the power that would never happen because it is not possible. An intellectual will never agree with another intellectual, just because he’s coming from the same community, same caste, not possible only. Therefore, now also Tukaram Maharaj’s compilation is available to you and nobody stopped it.
Chokamela’s compilation is still there for you. Bhakta Kumar’s compilation is still there for you. Kanak Das’s was a shepherd, his compilation is still there for you.
Since he started writing from now to today, I sang Kanak Das’s song. I still sing Kanak Das’s song as much as I sing the songs of Bhagavad Gita. Narottam Das Thakur, what was his background? Bhaktivener Thakur, what was his background? Are they Brahmins? As much as the classical scholars were presenting theirs, these people were more impactful.
What you’re saying is that because power was never concentrated. So even if abuse of power happened, it was more of individual abuse, not systemic abuse. So that’s why the legacies of all these poets, even if they were persecuted at that time, their legacy was not eliminated.
And the earlier example you gave of seeing gold in garbage also, that’s beautiful. Now, this is one of the things which often those who are Western thinkers, who talk about Western civilization, they say that it is in the Judeo-Christian ethos that the divinity of the individual is first asserted. And otherwise, now we could dispute that, but I just tell their way of thinking.
And they said that prior to that, people’s, the idea that everybody has a spark of the divine within them, that was not there at all. People were divided into tribal groups and my group is good. The other group is bad.
And if I get power, I can destroy the other tribes group. But they say it is the Christian ethos, Judeo-Christian ethos, which says that there is a spark of divine in everyone. So the irreducible dignity of the individual, that was brought into world history by the Judeo-Christian ethos.
And their argument is that communism, by rejecting this, by saying that there is nothing spiritual, there is no God, there is no soul, it actually takes away the dignity of the individual. So now, what you are saying is, even from our perspective, the labels like Shudra or Vaishya or whatever, they are circumstantial. But eternal is the fact that we are all Brahman, we are all parts of Krishna.
So that is a principle which is there in our tradition also, isn’t it? Yes. So therefore, you know, it’s a simple principle. If you want to contribute something, you will be challenged.
Whether you are Tukara Maharaj, whether you are Madhvacharya, whether you are Lord Chaitanya, you know, if you are playing a cricket match, you don’t expect a great player to experience a simple bowling. He will be attacked more viciously to make him out. You know, that is a simple principle that psychologically he will be attacked, you know, from every angle he will be attacked.
And that attack, they do not play victim consciousness. You never see Tukara Maharaj, Kanak Das playing a victim conscious, going to king asking, you know, give us praise, justice, I have been trampled by these people. They fought their battle with the people only.
Rather than looking for power coming from elsewhere, they fought their battle and they became so confident, the very people who went against them in every, if you see the old, old devotional movies, the villains, what happened in the modern villain, modern villains get killed. No, they get destroyed. But in the traditional movies, dramas, whether those who went against Tukara Maharaj, there was a transformation, they accepted the transformation.
You know, that Rama Shastri came and offered his obeisances to Tukara Maharaj. Beautiful. The followers of some Brahmanical background, they offered obeisances to our Kanak Das also.
Same thing happened with Surdas Tulsidas also. Same thing happened with Meera Bai also. So they resisted, Haridas Thakur, today is disappearance day.
They resisted, but they ultimately accepted the value in them. And that was not accepted because somebody else came from the government, they made a portfolio, they said you are giving a Ganapeet award, therefore you are good. No, they never went around looking for that confirmation, that endorsement.
It came from their own confidence and acceptance of the people, including those who opposed them. Beautiful. So what you are saying is that, that the fact that the individual is important is seen from the example of all these, all these great contributors and they faced opposition.
So now I would like to take this discussion to the other side, that individual worth is affirmed, no doubt, in our tradition also. And simultaneously, what would be the role of the role of the government? Because we could consider the left and the right from the government’s perspective. The left’s role is that, left’s vision is that the government should correct social inequities, that there are injustices, there are discrimination, that there are people who are disempowered, they should be helped.
The left, the right’s idea is that, that the government should get out of people’s way and people will use their talents and people will bring about their creativity. And that’s how humanity will succeed. So the right often leads to capitalism.
The left is equated with communism. So now if you are saying the individual is emphasized more, then that would be more like a right ideology. At the same time, in our tradition also, say we have, there are five sections of society which are to be protected, the brahmanas, the women, the children, the elderly, the cows.
So there are some, it is not everything is left to the individual. There is some responsibility for the society also, or the social structure for the government or whoever to take care. So how do we balance this? There is individual initiative and individual responsibility.
An individual shouldn’t claim to be victim. At the same time, there are some sections of society who are more likely to be victimized and they need to be protected. So how do, what would you like to say on this? That was also not based upon centralized governance.
That was also based upon decentralized governance, like taking care of this children, old people, and then women, and then the cows and the education people. Like now, like if you study carefully, Jarasandh was representing centralized government and Yudhishthira Maharaj was representing centralized inspiration, not governance. He never made people from his place, the kings of some other place.
When Jarasandh was killed, he did not bring somebody from Hastinapur to rule that because Hastinapur person will never understand the psychology, the cultural sensitivity of Magadh Desh. Never happened. But Jarasandh wanted to overturn this.
He wanted to control everything from centralized. Therefore Banasur, Banasur is again, Banasur represents, his thousands hand represents too much of centralized power. So by breaking Krishna, cutting all of his hands, it’s basically saying, okay, we are decentralizing the power.
So therefore the society, the smaller society, you know, what is the definition of Purandara? Purandara is a name of Indra. What does it mean? It is in the Vedas, Purandara means, he creates a Pura in such a way that when there is a overpopulation in one of the town, where people do not know each other, a society where they don’t know each other. So one who cuts the city into two parts so that they are again efficient to govern.
At the same time, there is a good affection also amongst all the citizens. Smaller, smaller towns. And therefore, if you study, the laws were not made by the king.
The laws were kept by the king. Laws were always made by the smaller villages. Then they would bring those laws to the king and they would say, in our village, we need three carpenters, four barber, five cobblers.
So the discussion would happen because king is not there. No, king is not there. They are there.
So when they all agreed together, then the king would stand. He was a law keeper, but not a law maker. Now what happens, a guy comes from Oxford University, bringing his law and implements into the village.
I’ll give a simple example. I was in one of the villages in Maharashtra in the community of the Vanvasi people, big Vanvasi town. Oh my God, what a house they built.
Now the government thought some of the IAS officers, they felt, oh, they’re living in a mud house. That means primitive. So we need to give them a concrete house.
That is progress. Right. So when you have a person coming from their background, only understanding the ecosystem properly.
So one IAS officer coming from their background, he told me, you know, sir, he said, this concrete house does not suit to their living standards, but government does not give them money for a mud house because somebody passed the policy. That is a Jarasandha style. Good intentions are there, but not beneficial.
So therefore there are the great dynamics between socialism and capitalism. If you want to call, you know, the emperor as a capitalist and the people as the socialist, there was no clash, but there was a cooperation. That’s fascinating.
A lot of points you made, like considering Jarasandha as centralization of power. That’s why he wanted to keep all the Kings under his control. And he was, I think he was also planning to do that yajna where he was planning to kill all the Kings.
So that’s the Yudhishthira. Yeah. And many places, wherever the Pandavas went, they defeated for the Rajsuya Yajna, but they never, they never destabilized or disrupted the power over there.
You like, in a sense, symbolically subordinate yourself to us, but you have to keep having the power. So then with this, now, when we consider today’s world, now today, this idea of having local laws and the King being a law keeper, not a lawmaker, that works when you could say that the world is, world was not that connected. Now today in today’s world, what say, what happens, say for what happened in China, a virus started over there and within weeks or within months, it spread all over the world.
So today the world is far more connected than in the past. Now, of course, all over the world, people are recognizing the importance of boundaries. When those countries who wanted to become globalized, internationalized, they also shutting down the boundaries to some extent.
So they’re recognizing this, but so if we have smaller and smaller units, so was there a concept of a country as such, because say there is a, so how do we demarcate a country? So there’s a village, then you could have a town, then we have a country, is a country defined by the dynasty, which is ruling it, or is a whole country, maybe you could call a country as a state, I don’t know what word we will use, Rashtriya you could use, but is it defined by ethos or, so is it that say the ethos of the Kuru dynasty and the ethos of say Drupada’s dynasty, did they have distinctively different ethos? What are the demarcating ideas? So why I’m asking this is that in Europe, they had this system of governance, where they said that, now as soon as we start dividing countries according to the either religion or culture or values, then what will happen is two countries will have very different religions, two countries will have two different values and they will clash. So their idea was that the government is not based on culture or religion or any of these things, the government is only for administration. And in that way, they tried to decrease the role of the government.
But eventually what has happened is that now they have the European Union, where it’s like a government above government, which is extremely powerful. So what was the concept of a country and how was it defined? So therefore, again, if you study when India got independence in 1947, basically the new government, they did not follow, I’m not a great fan of Gandhiji, but I very much appreciate the concept of self-governance. He wanted a very interesting point.
In that sense, he knew the background of Indian thought process compared to the socialistic and democratic thought process. By uniting together, politically they brought together, but culturally, which was already together, India was culturally always integrated. A Keralite Brahmana is serving in Badrinath.
A Karnataka Brahmana is serving in our Pashupatinath in our Nepal. A Maharashtrian Brahmana does service in Rameshwar. Are you saying this is happening now or this has happened historically? Now also it is happening.
When Shankaracharya came to Kashmir, Sharada Madh, which is on the other side, a park occupied Kashmir, the people who did not know the language, they made him as their guest. Now also it is happening. Now also it happens like that.
People can go across from either country, either state, either area. So again the battle or the conflict would happen amongst the king generally because of ego and ego has nothing to do with religion. Ego has nothing to do with religion.
This kingdom, the great Pratap Rudra Maharaj fought another Vaishnava called Krishnadevaraya coming from the same disciplic succession. Krishnadevaraya’s Guru was Vyasatirtha and Vyasatirtha is there in our list of Gurus in disciplic succession. There was a clash and it’s very interesting politically if you see.
So their Vaishnavism did not stop them from being identified with their ego. And can I say I am a better Vaishnava than King Pratap Rudra because I don’t fight. Krishnadevaraya wrote commentary on Andal’s poem.
But the point is their clash among the kingdom would only happen among the warrior class and you as an ordinary person, I could go to any kingdom which I choose. That was never stopped. But now because of the invasion of the outside forces who believed in centralized power, that centralized power makes you, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.
And unfortunately that also applied in the practice of religion. Religion was very decentralized system. I could be very provocative to say, the whole concept of organized religion comes from the centralized power only.
You know, somebody sitting in America is deciding what to be done in village in Maharashtra, how to escorts should be run in Maharashtra village. Yeah. And you could say something opposite also.
Somebody sitting in say, say some corner of India is saying what should be done in America. That same thing. Yeah.
That is both, both are both, you know, because therefore when you, when you make systems of education, spirituality, centralized, same role, it is like doing a march past. March past looks good, but life is like Parikrama. Everybody does according to their speed.
Just imagine if you are forced, you have to walk with us left, right, left, left, right, left. And your, your, your, your inefficiency is synonymous to our insincerity. Beautiful.
My God. Therefore, any form of capitalism in every aspect of life was never, capitalism was there. Dharmic capitalism was there.
It didn’t matter how big kingdom you built. What mattered was what will you do with your kingdom? That was the important principle. So earlier you mentioned is that at the level of the Kings, you could say it was capitalistic, but at the level of the villages, it was more communist in the sense that people had power and people took care of themselves, each other.
As you said, beginning only we quoted Gandhiji and that was the truth. It didn’t matter who was ruling. Prabhupada also mentions that I have to give one sixth of my tax.
It doesn’t matter whether it is this king or that king. And therefore Chanakya Pandit very interestingly makes this point, you know, people call him, you know, dictator. One of the core ideology of Chanakya, he said, government should not be made into powerful.
It should not be mere powerful. Government is a facilitator to make people powerful. This is Sanskrit like that.
Yeah. He said Raja, the word Raja, definition of Raja is in the Mahabharata. One who entertains the Praja is the Raja.
Amazing. Entertains in the sense that empowers or provides facility for living. Entertainments on every aspect of his life, you know, empowering them to grow in their life.
Oh, okay. That’s amazing. I never knew this.
So now just taking this forward that, so if the king is the law keeper, not the lawmaker and everybody, so the state in that sense, the state itself does not matter. The state, the reach of the state will vary depending on how big a king is, how powerful a king is, but the basic governing principles would remain the same. King A is ruling or King B is ruling.
And so I know what you said about power, about civilians not being affected. There was this Megasthenes who came from Greek. He wrote a book called Indica.
And he writes in that book that the striking thing about warfare in India was civilians were never touched. And he said this he saw was very different from the wars he had seen elsewhere. So it’s not just like we saying that it is our tradition, but it seems others have also observed it.
So now if it was so decentralized, then the caste system which led to a lot of discrimination or it is said to have led to a lot of discrimination. So even the, are you saying that even that was not centralized? But then it seems to be quite widespread across society. And I’ve heard people talk about it, especially people who have lived, I couldn’t, I read, I met one student in America and he said that his father was like a, was a math Olympiad winner.
But when he won the Olympiad, like the school principal invited him to his house for food. But he said, you can come to my house, but you cannot eat with me. They gave him food and another table to eat.
But he said, when I came to America, I was invited. So my PhD guide came to the airport to meet me and received me. He said, I found this is a completely different ethos of living.
So, I mean, we can’t just say that the caste discrimination is, its magnitude might have been exaggerated by the media, but still it does seem to be a serious problem. So how did it become like a systemic evil, which spread so far if everything was decentralized? Yeah. So again, again, again, if you study carefully, let us again go back to, you know, tradition only, an actual tradition.
Now, when you say Shudras were oppressed. Yes, certainly. As you gave the example, these examples are hundreds of such examples are there where people are discriminated in regards to eating habits also, right? Including Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not eat other than the house of the Brahmanas.
Can you call him as a, can you make him a discriminator? Well, what I’ve heard is he could not eat. Yeah. What I’ve heard is he was like being deferential to the existing system.
He didn’t want to disrupt the existing system. So then again, then the point is raised, Lord Chaitanya came to create a revolution. Would he not easily change this? That’s interesting.
He’s submitting to something which is so oppressive principle. Why would he accept something which is oppressive? He will fight for it. No, Lord Chaitanya was more of a reformer than a revolutionary.
It was more like incremental changes he did, not radical changes. But anyway, what are your thoughts? What is the point you’re making through Lord Chaitanya’s example? No, that we will discuss separately some other time. But the point is it is something so visible.
It is something so visible. You would actually, you know, it doesn’t take much time because if you study carefully, you know, there’s a big history about, you know, let us study cobbler. A cobbler was working under anybody.
Manu who is so vilified, slandered in one of his words, he says, the greatest happiness and greatest misery. What is the greatest happiness one should try to achieve? He said the greatest happiness one should try to achieve is that one should become self-sufficient, not work under anybody. Manu is saying this.
Manu is saying that. I can give you the quote also. Manu Smriti says that, you know, he says, the man’s subsistence, profession and means of livelihood land for this.
No, wait a minute. Okay. Wait.
Where is that? But are you saying the point is that even Kudra should not be dependent? Is it? What is the point of what he’s saying? Yes. The whole principle is nobody should be dependent. He’s not specifically gender specific.
He’s not specifically Varna specific. He’s saying as a rule for life, one should always live an independent life. As much as you’re independent, that much you are happy.
As much as you’re dependent, that much you are miserable. Now, take for example, up until when I was growing up, I would go to a tailor, I would go to a cobbler and cobbler would say. Interesting.
A tailor, he would say. Right. You go to a butcher.
You go to a butcher’s place also. I’ll give an example. This is this other day we were having an educational discussion and an interesting story was shared by a farmer.
He said he’s also part of an education. They’re doing alternative education. So he was taking the students from Bangalore to a village for harvesting.
And some of the students, when they saw this shepherds, sleeping in the outside of the road, in the fields, then they said, they’re sleeping like beggars. So this one was driving. He didn’t like their statement, what they’re saying.
They turned around, took back. He said, let us go and converse with them. Do we ever converse with these people? Those who are, unfortunately, even some of the great number of people who are party to the formation of constitution.
They only talked about their personal experience. When you make your personal experience into a truth, you are basically becoming violent. So yes, we are not denying.
We are not denying. But let us study about so-called Shudras. Did they actually live a dependent life? They did not live a dependent life.
A cobbler, a sutar, a carpenter, a potter, a blacksmith, a goldsmith, even the Jhaduwala, they never worked full-time for anybody. On the other hand, you’ll find lots of Brahmanas working for a king full-time. In that sense, they were Shudras.
Read Manu Samhita definition of Shudra. When you open your chart, the best way to refute from the foundational principle is, when you open your chart, you may be born in a Brahman family but your chart may say Shudra Varna. Somebody may be born in a Shudra family but the chart may say you are Brahman Varna.
It does not define your Jati. Jati is determined by birth but Varna doesn’t talk about your Jati. It is not based upon your profession so much.
The profession was there because generally legacy, people those who are talking, 80% of the people who occupy, even amongst the Dalit leader, their children only occupy the post to become next leaders. North Korean premier, his sister is becoming a boss now. Fidel Castro’s brother became the boss.
We are saying that the mentality to centralize power is there everywhere. So even if somebody is a Dalit, they will also centralize power. These are universal human vices.
You see now, there are more number of people who are dependent compared to 100 years ago. So is it that Shudras were not given money or they were just paid in kind or something like that? So are you saying that traditionally Shudras were not looked down upon? They were contributing in their own way and they were respected for that contribution. All their ingredients, if you want to make a spoon for puja, where does it come from? If you want to make an instrument for fighting, where does it come from? There is a community in Karnataka.
They are called as Panchashilas. The Panchashilas are basically Shudras. They are called as Sutar, they are called as Badigar.
Badigar is a carpenter. They are called as Phattar, the stone breakers. They are called as Shilpakar, the carvers.
They are called as Sonar, those who make gold. And then there is one more thing, and these are all initiated Brahmanas. Not because we started that.
Since time immemorial, whether you are Shudra, Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, you all offered Surya Vandana. Now it is only focused to the Brahmana, though Upanayan Samskara means only Brahmanas. So therefore, see money again, the whole concept of money is very new thing.
They were given value for the work rather than giving coins to them. So now if I’m trying to understand the flow of thought, so like you give the example of these people who are sleeping on the grass or something, but from somebody’s perspective, they might seem to be homeless and suffering. So are you saying that discrimination against certain castes, that discrimination itself was a perception based on outside definition and the people themselves discriminated against? They were happy in their communities? Yeah.
And I’m not saying again, as I said, human ego is very strong. But those who resisted, like people say, Oh, Ekalavya was Shudra, therefore he was not taught. That’s a wrong nonsense.
Because he was a son of a king. Guha was a son of a king. During Vijayanagara kingdom, there was a Chanchuli tribal people.
Now if you go to the place where Navanar Singha is there, Jyadanar Singha, all those Navanar Singha Kshetras, they were completely ruling that. The Vijayanagara king never interfered. I can give the list of hundreds of kings who are non-Kshatriyas, who are non-Brahmanas, who are non-Vaishyas, they were Shudra kings.
Interesting. Recently, it struck me that we also call Nanda Maharaj as a king, isn’t it? And he’s a Vaishya. Yeah, of course, it is Vrindavan, not a very big place, but still he was the ruler over there.
And he was given power, he was given that regard. So, are you saying that the structures itself were not as watertight as they are portrayed? And everybody, just from their individual ability and individual dedication, they could rise within the structures to positions of power. And in that sense, even among Shudras, somebody could become the most powerful among them.
And then they would have influence, they will have a say in society. And so it was not so much like a systemic discrimination, it was a system, people could rise within that system as per their nature. Yeah, what happened was, basic trouble happened specifically with the people of, especially those who would carry the excreta of a human being.
With them, it happened to such an extent, they were abused to such an extent, they were tortured to such an extent. There are hundreds of them, there is no question of they were not tortured. But the Vanvasis never got to interact with the real world.
They were more happy, there were different class of Vanvasis. And the Vanvasis, where we call them tribal people, they were made completely poor by the British law system. They destroyed the whole forest act.
By making a forest act, they said that entire forest belonged to the government, even though the entire forest would belong to the typical village Devi. So they had the facility to go and collect resources. It’s an amazing story if you study the whole law of the forest law which Britishers passed.
When they took control of the forest, more trees were cut than when it was under the protection of the people. Because they would not pluck growing trees, they would not destroy. I met shepherds in one village, we call them Kurubaru.
Kurubaru means shepherds who shepherd sheep and goats. And what a culture they had. They knew how to dye, dye means dyeing the blanket, they knew how to weave, they knew how to find the proper colour for that from the forest only.
After making that, they knew how to sell, marketing skills they had, trading skills they had. And while doing all that, they also had that spiritual connection. When I went to their group, I saw them, everyone had a tilak.
Some tilak were Shiva’s followers, some tilak were Vaishnava’s followers. And then one of the elderly person said, this goat is a Lakshmi for us. Then I asked humbly, do you not eat this? He said once a year.
And they were almost vegetarian for their entire year. And they were able to see divinity, their Lakshmi, they were able to see Lakshmi. So how do, if I don’t converse only, I make a point, oh they are oppressed people, they are oppressed people.
You never talk to them. You never interacted with them. You are simply making out, going out to American University and you are saying the statement, oh these are all oppressed.
You go and talk to them. Like I was talking about these villagers, these shepherds, they were roaming with 500 goats and sheep. So some of the boys started talking to them in a typical Kannada language.
And they asked them, you know, how much will you sell? When will you sell it? He said, whenever we want to sell, there is no such thing. Whenever we need to sell, we will sell. We don’t sell based upon what, when they want to buy, we sell based upon when we want to sell.
This is pride. You know, good pride. And those shepherds said, for you, when you keep your money in the bank, you are dependent on the bank when the bank will open.
But here our bank is a moving bank. So then they asked him, how much do you sell it for? He said from 12 to 15,000. And the students said, my God, they told the teacher, sir, they’re traveling with 500 goats and sheep.
That was more than 60-70 lakh rupees. But the unfortunate reality, we judge people being very refined and classy, if they’re speaking in English, wearing clean cloths, according to our definition. You know, our cloths, maybe the city people may keep the same dress for three days, you know, putting some perfume and call that as a clean.
But here these guys are wearing every day, but because there is some soil of mud here and there, they’re in a typical village cloth and we call them as a dirty people and we have to refine them. Our thought process itself is wrong. You know, before the Islamic invasion, there was no concept of toilet.
If you go to the Hampi Palace, when you go to Hampi, there is a queen’s bathing place, but you will not find queen’s toilets. If you go to Shivaji’s palace in Raigad, I’ve been to these places and I was consciously looking where would they pass, where would they go to class excreta. So what are you implying by that? So because there were no toilets, you know, so therefore there is no question of bringing stool on your head.
That was when the, this is what I’ve heard from one great scholar called S.L. Bhairappa. He wrote this book called as Avarana and he’s writing based upon his research. He said in Indian Vastu structure, making a toilet inside the house was non-existing.
You’d go to respond to the call of nature in a remote place. There was a system how you pass stool also. There was a science behind it.
I remember one lady from Rajasthan, she came to one of our devotees house. First time she had come to Mumbai, after staying for a few days, she told one of her grandson, he said, you guys are very, very strange. He said, what is that? He said, you guys eat outside and pass stool inside.
She said, we eat inside and pass stool outside. I heard about this, but the way it is done today, I think public defecation is one of the biggest social health problems. So yeah, but because what I’m saying, the village, when it is overpopulated, people are passing in the street.
There was a science behind passing stool also. It is not what the modern villagers are doing, passing right near the gutter, where the vehicles are going. It is so unhygienic.
I’m not saying they should, but even when you build a toilet in the villages, it should be built in such a way that the excreta can be converted into manure. That’s just not the structure. If the sewage system is not proper, it is not going to solve the problem.
It is the structure is there, but the substance of utility is not there. But they were expert in utilizing it properly. Human excreta was not stored in a place where it would cost so much of, you know, if you read the scripture, there is a whole science how to pass stool.
Yeah. So which direction you pass? Okay. Now the point is that, so we are discussing about the, whether the caste system was actually discriminatory or not.
And then you were specifically talking about the people who are handling human excreta. They were looked down upon, but even that was itself not as extensive as we might think, because it was not that all that was concentrated in one place. If people would do things naturally, then it would also get minimized.
But if we see that this, the whole idea of a toilet, it is also relatively a recent invention. Even in palaces in Europe and other places, royalty didn’t have that in the past. So, then they would have people handling it over there, they would call it a night soil or something.
That is the word they would use for it. But the kind of social contempt that came up in India, it doesn’t seem to have come up that prominently in other parts of the world toward those who are handling this, because this is a universal function in human society. So, it’s one thing to say, talk about the, talk about how the caste system was not as discriminatory as it seems.
But it, we can’t actually whitewash the fact that there was discrimination. And so why did it emerge so prominently in India, but it did not happen so much in other parts of the world. So, it happened differently.
The slavery was to such an extent, I can kill a black person and still not call him a criminal because he is my property. Yeah, there was abuse. I would say the Indian ego with purity was so much, you know, the ego of purity became so much that the external dirt was seen as their substance and that was the greatest sin it was created.
No, that was the greatest sin. And therefore, all many speakers, many, many writers, especially in the 14th and 15th century, if you again notice this, this is not there in the 10th century, this is not there in the 9th century, this is not there in the literature of 8th century. All this literature is there from the 14th to 13th to 15th, 16th, 17th century, where people became externally so egoistic about their purity.
You know, especially the priestly class, they became so egoistic about their purity and therefore they became so abusive. There is no question, we are not saying that didn’t happen. Every civilization will have its flaw.
But to always hang that civilization, like somebody said, to say that America had a problem and to say India is a problem, he said that is so bad. That is a big difference. So the Europeans get away with their atrocities by talking repeatedly about India was caste, India was caste, India was caste.
Yes, you know the caste system is there now also unfortunately and it will continue to exist. But the definition of caste system will change. Among the engineers, you know IITians will feel that I am superior.
There is a caste system among the engineers, there is a caste system among the elitist people who define what is history. Now the very Brahmanas, you know I remember listening to yesterday one in Maharashtra after the death of Mahatma Gandhi, the kind of atrocities happened against the Brahmanas is, can’t believe it. One politician he said that in a public rally he said, I will not name that politician because you know famous politician, he said, I will make all the Brahmana women wash the pot.
Their Mangasutra will be stolen. So when you make a public discourse like that, this is not a social reformation, it is teaching hatred towards others. If you are able to forgive around it for breaking all the temples, why can’t you teach brotherliness with the Brahmanas? There were as many Brahmanas who were racist in regards to caste system, but there were so many Brahmanas who were also reformists.
This is one fact which is overlooked very much that there was an internal reform tradition quite active within our dharmic tradition also. Yeah. So at one level that caste, basically the human tendency to discriminate and to take power for oneself, dominate others, that is a universal human evil and every civilization has been prone to that.
It manifests differently in different places. Yes, of course. It manifests differently in different places.
Nobody talks, you know, why can’t they speak? If you study in 1947 in India, got two parts, Pakistan and Hindustan or India. Jinnah chased away all the Hindus from there, but few Sindhis remained because they are strong-willed, but many Bhangis stayed there. You know, we don’t call them as Bhangis who are, you know, doing all the work of, you know, night soil cleaner.
He said, you stay all that. And many years back, Radhanand Maharaj had gone many, many years back before when there was troubles were not there, you know, he stayed with these people. He said, what a traumatized situation for them.
You know, just because they were Muslims, they were not treated properly. In Kashmir, up until 370 was abrogated, if you are from that community, there was no facility. Why can’t the liberals don’t talk about it? The discrimination.
If you go to Saudi Arabia, if you are not an Arabic Muslim, you will not be allowed to stand in the same line to visit Kaaba as the Arabic people. There are different gates for Syrian Muslims, Omanian Muslims, the Indian Muslims. So racism and discrimination and violence is everywhere.
Unfortunately, it has to be fought on a very, very strong level, but not making a politicizing about this. By teaching hatred towards, what does the Dalit learn? Unfortunately, more than self governance, they are taught to hate particular class of people. Will that benefit to them? If the blacks are taught to hate the white, will that make them grow? Will they become evolved people? Hatred will kill you.
Hatred will finish you. It’s like burning your own place. If I hate your intelligence, it’s not going to benefit me.
It will only destroy you and it will destroy me also. Sometime political left, therefore one Islam reformist, he said, the left is more disruptive than the Islamic terrorists and I 100% believe in that. I have a sympathy for the terrorists because they are innocent, violent because they are emotional, but the left is so terroristic because they are very refined.
They are disruptive of the social order. They are disruptive of the intellectual order. They are disruptive of the spiritual order.
They are basically foundational principle is very disruptive, but the end of the day, they make the biggest money also. That is so true. As you said rightly that left and it is because it’s not so visible as a threat.
So it is not even noticed. So if you consider the left and the right, when the right goes toward extremism, immediately there is a hue and cry. And we also have well defined parameters.
So for example, if the right say start saying that this race is intrinsically superior to this race, or there are like credo claims of superiority. So then we will immediately say that this is rightist extremism that say my dynasty, like the caste system in India, or say Hitler or Nazism in our race is intrinsically superior. So when the right goes to the extreme, we as a civilization or as humanity in today’s world have recognized that this is going too far.
But with respect to the left, there are no well defined limits of when the left goes too far. So because of that, we can keep going further, further. And then many of the structures, which actually ground human society, which help humanity to function, they are perceived or they are portrayed as exploitative.
And because of that, society gets disrupted. So I was reading one Christian thinker, he written an article called the book on the return of the strong gods, the strong gods, he says is three things, family, nation and faith. So he says throughout history, these three have have stabilized human beings in their in facing life’s challenges, they give us a sense of identity and purpose.
But what the left does is it starts saying that family is exploitative unit, where the men are exploiting the wife and the parents are exploiting the children. So it creates conflict within them. And then within nation also, they in one sense, they say that nation is a structure by which people will be exploited, manipulated, but then they get a supranational power.
And then religion also, at one level, they will say that religion is a tool by which the priests get power over people. But then they themselves become extremely intolerant toward anyone who disobeys them. Like we have the cancel culture, cancel culture now, where anybody who speaks one politically incorrect statement, and even if they have spoken that politically incorrect statement 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, based on that their career can get ruined.
So it is it is worth it is almost as bad as, say heretics being condemned in past in religions. So, so I agree with you that left is left can be actually very dangerous. So, you know, one, you want to comment on this? Or I’ll go to another question? Yeah.
Okay. Now, one question I had, so how did the left gain so much power? Because in one sense, wherever it has been tried, it has been a it has been a not just a failure, but a catastrophic failure. If we consider China, if we consider USSR, but still, now it is even in India, in the intelligentsia, as well as in America, the left seems to be enormously powerful.
So what is your understanding of how they gain so much power? People, they invested in their like Gita, Krishna says, Dushkruti. You know, if you’re structurally Dushkruti systematically, it doesn’t see the whole principle of growth, you know, it’s a very interesting in the, in the, in the, in the dharma shastras. It does not say that because you are good, therefore you will grow.
Good people have to be smart also. Interesting. No, so we should appreciate the working, you know, the invested since 200 years or 150 years, how to work.
So we have to give due respect to them for their growth because they invested. What has happened with the white, what has happened with the spiritual organization or the, you know, dharmic people, they continue to invest in the same place, building the temples, no, rather than building intellectually stable, competent people. We again, I’ll go back to that.
We will want, we want more workers than independent thinkers by workers. My leader, once you work, you build, you cook, you do this, you do that, all spiritual organization, all the temples, they are focused in their own temple. As long as the bell is rung, people are coming, they’re drinking the charnam vrat.
So they never work structurally. They have a very romantic idea, you know, but these guys, the communist people are very, very structured, very systematic. And then all kinds of sciences, they place their people, which is happening almost like 100 years.
So now it is kind of giving fruits. Like when an Indian comes to study in America, I remember talking to one, you know, Hindu group in America. They said when an Indian lands to America, he’s confronted by two class of people, the evangelic and the left liberal.
Interesting. Okay. Yeah.
But we do not invest in, you know, we do not invest in knowledge. No, we do not invest in, we do not invest in, you know, how many, how many spiritual organization invest money on training thousands scholars of the Vedas who can bring that Vedic knowledge to, you know, whether it is astronomy, whether it is Vastu, whether it is astrology, whether it is Ayurveda, we don’t. We have not invested five people to train Ayurvedic education.
Once they become Ayurvedic doctor, we use them, but we don’t train them. But the communist people for a hundred years, they invest in making narrative built. So therefore I give them full, you know, like Aurangzeb had the courage to say, Shivaji is great enemy because he is strategized.
And now our people are happy to do their own small thing and feel, you know, that is satisfaction without realizing the next generation will be slaughtered by, I know so many devoted children. When they go to college, those who are studying psychology, I encounter many of these children, they have grown seeing them, you know, almost in the womb of their mother, you know, seeing their, you know, you know, they’re becoming bigger four months, six months, nine months. Now they’re 23, 24.
I always say they have a faith, which is right wing, but their psychology is extremely left wing. They are so much appreciative of, you know, they will speak without knowing about Sati system, caste system, the freedom of speech in the, in regards to, I know so many, you know, girls talk about, you know, marriage, why marriage? I know so many boys saying, you know, why marry girl? Why not marry somebody who’s older than you? You know, there are some boys that say, you know, I want to marry a girl which is older than me, at least five to seven years older than me. They are disruptive in their habits caused by education system.
So when you have this deadly combination that you have a faith in God, but your psychology is extremely left, I say, my God, how will we deal with them? No, they’re so liberal. They’re so disruptive of the family values. They’re so disruptive and therefore a broken society, broken, broken family cannot build a broken society.
They cannot build a society. It’s very striking. They are so individualistic.
They’re so individualistic in their thought process. They cannot work with their own family. What to speak of working in an organized religion? So you’ll have big, big temples, but there’ll be nobody to, you know, they’ll all be sitting here.
Their children only will be in the colleges questioning the very concept, what you learned from them. And I’m not saying I, because I’m dealt with, I have my last 32 years out of that last 20 years, I’ve been with the children. I see them grow.
Yeah. And even if you bring new people to Krishna consciousness or any spirituality, they will be coming from such a liberal ideology and even compromise to make them devotee rather than changing their psychology because it’s easier. That’s true.
And it’s easier to give them faith, forget about what is their background, but their background will be disruptive. They’ll be disruptive. Therefore, my understanding is many devotees are extremely liberal.
They support democratic values, you know, the Congress values, and they’re also good devotees. I said, my God, you know, they will, they will abuse the Hindu values without understanding it properly, but they will support the socialistic, you know, disruptive values. You know, actually there’s a lot of what you said.
I think we’ll have to unpack it a little bit one by one. I appreciate this point. I was also surprised when I travel abroad and I meet devotees children, once they develop a little relationship, like there’s one devotee preacher, his father is a preacher who gives class to hundreds of people.
And the son came to me and he said, I don’t even know whether I’m sure God exists or not. And he had so many questions like that. So two, three things I noticed.
First is that we Indians, when we got educated, we focus very much on the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, and math, something like that. So now, till now, the left has not penetrated that. So there you go, you just learn skills and earn money and move on in life.
But many of the devotee children, now the left ideology is not just coming at the level of graduate school, it’s coming in schools also at the secondary level of education also. So we are not equipped for dealing with it at all. You’re not even aware how much the change has happened in the kind of things that are taught in schools.
And especially in colleges, if somebody goes into the liberal arts or humanities field, it is like slaughtering their faith. Oh my God, they’re slaughtered. Yeah, they’re slaughtered completely.
It’s interesting, you mentioned that they have the right wing faith. So when you’re saying right wing faith, that means they maintain the nominal idea that I have faith. But the values underlie that faith, none of those values are there.
So the faith is just like a shell, but there’s no substance within it. Yeah, that’s true. So so now just before we go to the children thing, as you said that we have invested as temples, we have not invest, we as a movement and not just I would say we as a movement, but in general, Hindus seem to focus more on like visible symbols of piety, like temples, rather than rather than like teachers for learning and teaching.
So this is very much true. And is there any reason within Hinduism because of this happened? Because we see in Christianity, they’ve invested in scholars in I would say even in Islam, they have done a remarkably good job that rather than Islam being criticized for being extremist, criticism of Islam is now criticized Islamophobia. So, so this is, I mean, this is, to some extent, at least the job of Islamic intellectuals, not just Islamic intellectuals, but others also, the left has also cooperate to some extent.
But is there something within our tradition, which made us neglect this, that neglect the nourishment of the creation of creation of Brahmanas in terms of intellectuals who could contribute to society? How did this happen? Yeah, for my perspective, whatever I’ve understood, whatever I’ve seen around, you know, that some other, it takes, it takes a strategy. Again, you need to have political acumen also for this, you know, not simply, not simply focused on sweet, you know, like simple, when you talk about Krishna’s pastime with the cowherd boys, Krishna going to the pasturing ground with the cows, the story is great. But when somebody wants to say, I want to do organic farming, I want to keep a cow, he’s immediately discouraged.
You know, so Krishna with the cows is good as long as he remains in the Bhagavatam. We will worship the statue of cows, but we will not invest in, you know, empowerment. So therefore, you know, this is a, it’s very important.
It’s a particular group of people. Of course. Yeah.
Overall, overall Hinduism is not investing their money in a charity. And where does the charity speak? Charity is never spoken for giving, for doing something. Charity is always spoken about giving to an educationalist.
No, he’s the one who creates scholars, intellectuals, you know, right. We don’t invest. I would prefer giving the money for fees for those who are already fed.
No, we feed 56 items for those who have a diabetic problem. With that, we can actually invest for people’s education who are studying Ayurveda with Dharmic background, for people studying, you know, Vastu with a Dharmic background. These are all soft power, you know, studying, studying Vedic psychology is so much important.
Yeah. You know, so therefore it is a, it is, it is a responsibility. People just close their eyes.
I’m very, you know, I say, no, Janet, it’s not none of our business. I want to, because building temple is very easy. Yeah.
You know, one of the things which I read when you’re talking earlier about the Renaissance, that they say one of the causes of the downfall of Christianity was that priesthood and scholarship became divorced. And priesthood was required for running the churches, but scholarship was neglected because that was not needed for running the churches. So I, so we can say to some extent in India that has happened even more, you know, we have, we have Ramana priests who get paid and priests do the rituals at people’s home, they do rituals in the temples.
So priesthood are needed to maintain the cultural structures right now. But priesthood and scholarship has become significantly separated. And priesthood, priests are taken care of, but scholars are not.
So they are not, if you’re, if you’re trying to study scriptures and go deeper, you’ll be called as a useless fellow, you know, good for nothing, bookworm. A Sanskrit study is considered as arrogance, but studying in English Cambridge is considered as humility. How can, how can language make you humble and, you know, arrogant? Oh God, that’s true.
It is striking. So we, just to take a backlash, we were talking about how leftists have gained power and we have lost power that you’re saying this because they invested in the long-term vision of… They invested in long term, you know, that we have to give them credit. It has not come just abruptly, disruptively.
Somebody, we don’t know who, when they started systematically invested in education, they controlled education, they controlled the main narratives. Once you control the narratives, you know, your textbook, your education system, it does not matter who is telling in our, in our Wikipedia, like we are working on something called as Dharma Wiki in Wikipedia. They don’t quote Shila Prabhupada.
They don’t quote, you know, this Swami Ardhat Swami. They don’t quote even the Purvacharyas. They quote some Western scholar about Indian thought process.
If you study about Somarat, you know, in the Vedas, Somarat is called as an intoxication beverage for enhancing your sexual power. So when you even read that one statement, it stucks because poison always is slow. It’s not abrupt because if you give somebody a deadly poison instantly, that reveals everything.
But thoda thoda poison, then they say thoda thoda by giving little, little poison, you know, the entire system becomes poison. Like how Chanakya Pandita would create, you know, this Vishakanyas. Their entire system was Vishakanya.
Rather than attacking an opponent kingdom with a deadly attack, you kill them slowly. So we have to give them due respect for their systematization, whether it is liberal arts, whether it is now again, in many of the Western college in India also, I would say they should not bring philosophy to engineering student because the people who teach philosophy would be this class of people only. It is better that the engineering students simply learn engineering because now if you study the transformation what happened, which one of the leftist journalists called the internet Hindus.
The internet Hindu phrase was coined before 2014 election by one journalist. We will not take their name since we are not talking about them. So who were these rediscovered Hindus? Most of them, they were doctors and engineers.
Those who went to America to study or to work, Indian people. After building up their career wise nicely, they started realizing what next now. So they started reforming themselves.
They started rediscovering. They started studying Sanskrit. They started studying astrology.
But if you study those who are social science and those who are bureaucrats, those who are, you know, diplomats, they have been so brainwashed with left ideology. You know, one of the greatest disadvantage of this new education policy is bringing the western university, the liberal arts. You will have more JNUs.
I will always vote for BJP government, but just see how the power structure plays. Recently there was a conference about education. They said there will be more number of people will be, because liberal arts means, you know, you will be disruptive about, I was talking to Marwadi family, where they always took care of the cows in their family.
But one of their son is studying in this liberal arts college. He said, you know, what is the point in making a noise about eating beef? So casually, coolly he was talking about. He said, it’s such a toxic background of, you know, our people are talking about, you know, cows, flesh, so what? People let them choose what they want to eat.
I would refute it, no doubt, but how many people will I catch, catching one person after one person, you know, because narrative is there everywhere. In India, I have no, people say meat eating is bad. I would say meat eating, those traditional meat eaters were always vegetarians half of their time.
Saravanmas, they never ate. Friday, they never ate. Saturday, they never ate.
Thursday, they never ate. It takes lot of self-control to be vegetarian for four days and non-vegetarian for three days. But the modern non-vegetarians, they are beastly.
They want 365 days and they go with the tag of Iyer, Pandey, Tiwari, Shukla, you know, just see how the left ideology makes you disruptive. A Kuruba, the shepherd whom you are trying to fight for them, he has got more refineness. He said, no, we don’t eat meat once a year.
I grew up like that, surrounded by such people. I myself was a meat eater. Not the way where people, you know, no eating of meat during the month of Saravan.
You don’t even think about it. You know, I used to say that some people have this beef eating festivals, they call it in colleges and other things. So I was, I wanted to find out why, you know, why particularly make it like a attack against the Brahminical culture.
So they have created their own narrative that actually, that as the, as Hindu society started elevating cows higher and higher, then because of treating cows as pure, those who started dealing in cow flesh, they were considered more and more impure. And that’s how they consider that the treating the cow as pure has caused Hindu society to treat us as impure. So for them, killing cows and eating beef is not just refuting, rejecting Brahminical culture, but they are thinking that they are attacking the cause.
So it’s such a distorted narrative that people are not really connected. As you said, once the narrative is formed, it’s very difficult to change. When the first Westerners came to Kerala, if you read that also, my God, what a food they enjoyed.
It was pure vegetarian food served by the kings of Kerala. Somebody recently sent me a Pongal festival food with a green leaf, with so many nice items. So I wrote back to that man, he said, all the item is gone, only green is left now.
So what is that communism? Communism where people, as you said, because there is a pride of, oh, I will eat cows. It’s my right. That’s what I’m saying.
A Chandala in the Mahabharata, Chandala has a debate with Vishwamitra Muni. That was one of the beautiful discussions between Vishwamitra Muni and Chandala. Chandala is giving such a beautiful argument to Vishwamitra Muni, why even in emergency, you should not eat flesh.
More, more wisdom. That how is that person compelled to eat Chandala? Chandala, is it a birth? Is it Jati? Or means how is he called a Chandala? He said that he should not eat meat. Chandala is called because he was eating dog’s flesh and he was serving dog’s meat.
It’s a profession. Okay. So he’s saying a Brahmana should not eat flesh.
Not that he will not eat. He’s saying, he’s saying why? Because he knew the diversity of world. He did not try to create one kind of, you know, have food habit.
You know, therefore, therefore when you stress over, you know, when it’s focused too much about no meat eating, no meat eating, no meat eating, you know, when you overstress the pure vegetarian, overstress the concept of vegetarianism. Now they overstress the, you know, you worship cows, you know, more than a worship of a cow, you love cows. There’s a difference.
When a cow is made into a murthy, Krishna’s way of every, how do you worship Guru? The Guru worship has to be based upon simple principle. It is based upon Vidya. It is not based upon making 60, 70 items for a Sanyasi, 50 people are cooking and thinking that we are pleasing.
No, they are causing pain to him. Go and cook for your own family, man. You’re not feeding, your worker is feeding for your children and your 50 women are cooking for a Guru.
That is capitalism. Unreasonable capitalism. So you please Guru by learning knowledge from him.
That is how you worship. Bhagavad Gita, what does Krishna say? You know, you say if you want to worship Krishna in regards to Bhagavad Gita, then you study Bhagavad Gita. Don’t show only picture, Krishna spoke, Krishna spoke, Krishna spoke.
What he spoke, you read it. How do you worship the cow? Not by just doing puja to the cow and giving, you know, during the Gopastami, ek din jaake sab log pachas garland daal dete ho, usse acha ghaas ke liye kuch banao na ek gareeb kisan ke liye de do. So worship of a cow involves caring for the cow.
So there is a diversity in worship also in Sanatan Dharma. You know, one Manu says, when you ask a Brahmana, how is your health? That’s an insult. Ask him how is your learning happening? If you go and tell a Vaishya, stop earning money.
You don’t give him a philosophy which is non-existent for him. Vaishya has to ask how is your growth in your business and then use it for a right reason. So if I understand right, you’re talking about, you’re giving this as an example of how there are diverse definitions of success.
And then you said, even with respect to like principles of regulation, like meat-eating, there are also diverse levels over there. So the Chandala is telling that a Chandala might deal with meat, but a Brahmana should not. And in that sense, the bigger picture we were discussing is that there is diversity at various levels in the Vedic tradition.
And the leftist narrative, by portraying everything negatively, it just crushes everything and says that everything is bad. Like you earlier said that America has problems, but India is a problem. Or say we could say in current situation, uh, America has racism or America is a racist country.
So it’s like, like taking one voice and generalizing it or universalizing it. So, but that can, so that you can never, yeah. So universalization can never happen.
Sorry, I said no country, you know, this is spoken by Shalya and Karna’s discussion. There is a discussion between Karna and Shalya. You know, no civilization can be called as an evil civilization forever.
That’s non-existing such a definition. No human race. You can talk by their habits.
Oh, because they eat this, therefore they are Mleksha and they are Yavanas. But there also you’ll find refined people practicing undefined, but dharmic values. Therefore you always judge civilization based upon collective of the events, not because you want to define them as bad.
Like 20 years ago, collective of events, a hundred years ago, there was, there was operation against the black. That was a bad thing. But bringing back a hundred years ago story and saying that there is a systematic racism.
There are people who are in the system who are racist. Yeah. But repeatedly telling there is a racism in the system.
No, system racism happened in 1960s and before when there was no rights. Your definition itself is stubborn definition. No, there is a racism system.
There is a racism system. No, there are people in the system who are racist. No, I read something very striking about this.
He says that as soon as you say something is systemic, you make a solution impossible and undefinable. Also to have a solution, you have to make the problem specific, specific. Okay.
This is an incident. This is an incident. Like if a husband, wife quarrel is there and if the wife tells the husband, you are always like this, then how are you going to like this? All men are like this.
Men are born to exploit women. Yeah. So similarly, there are, there are incidents of casteism throughout human history, throughout Indian history, and they may be, they are there now also, but to say India is casteist, that is painting in too broad a brush.
That’s, that’s, that’s very, that’s very violent. You know, you want to be disruptive. You want people to fight, you know, hatred, development of hatred.
When you hate somebody to such an extent, you fighting for justice and hating somebody are two different things. Yes, true. In fact, when you hate, basically you’re giving it to the same forces that made the other person do unjust things and then you will end up doing the unjust things eventually.
Yes. Yeah. So now, considering how widespread the influence of the left is, do you see any way forward? How can it be countered by us as individuals or as a movement or as a broad community? Do you see any light at the end of the tunnel or how do you see the vision ahead? Certainly because, because, you know, again, other logic, people say it’s Kali Yuga, it will happen.
That’s like Tamsik. That is a Tamsik Drishtikon. Interesting.
Okay. No, bring that aspect. It’s Kali Yuga.
Therefore it will happen. And therefore we don’t have to worry. That’s a Tamsik Drishtikon.
Why? Because these very people, if there is a property difficulty, they’ll fight in the court like cats and dogs. More spiritual people have gone to the court compared to others also. You know, interesting.
When it comes to real battle, they bring the concept of Kali Yuga. When there is a superficial battle, they go and fight. Today only I was received some message from somebody, I’m going to fight this devotee.
I’m going to fight him out. You know, it’s easier to fight your own people because it doesn’t take much tapasya. It takes only the ego.
So therefore, first thing we should never say it is Kali Yuga and therefore, it’s going to happen. That’s a Tamsik Drishtikon. We are just using some knowledge to justify our own irresponsibility, our own inaction.
That is the first thing. And second thing, if you study again, then again we have to go back to Dharmic scripture. The battle between the Dharma and Adharma is an eternal battle.
Sura and Asura is an eternal battle. So because it is an eternal battle, you have to create your own army also. When I say army, it doesn’t mean that you take weapons and fight.
Your army which is based upon wisdom, knowledge, if you don’t create, you’ll keep getting hit only. But Dharma has to establish. Like Krishna told Arjuna, if you don’t do it, I’ll get somebody else.
So therefore, there will be people. I see there are some good people, younger generation, in the broader society of Hinduism. Beautiful presentation, beautifully they are giving talks properly, representing, writing books properly, giving up their jobs and coming, living with less, not living with less and saying, okay, I just want to stay in Vrindavan and do bhajan.
When Vrindavan is overpopulated by such bhajan doers, they create more pollution. First practice is Bhagavad Gita. First become Arjuna, then you’ll become a tree at Radha Konda, the Arjuna tree.
There are Pandavas living in Radha Konda also. Remember? They are living as trees in Radha Konda. But when did they start living? Not before the battle.
So now the concept is only Smaran without Yudha is very synthetic, escapist and only few elite, luxurious people can do it. And only battle without Smaran will be exhaustive because the battle in the material world is eternal battle. You have to fight your battle, not that you say, I will stop all the battles only, I will establish Dharma to such an extent, there will be no battles only.
Therefore, people ask now, what happened? Krishna established Dharma, then still the problem is going on. Are you stupid? You have a chance to fight, you have the chance to grow, you have the chance to contribute. Because Krishna established Dharma for next 100 years, the Pandavas ruled nicely.
But even in that rule also there are some selfish people. So people are expecting Dharma Stapan means it should be completely like this spiritual world. It’s a land of duality.
Dharmic forces means minimize the duality, maximize the integration, maximize the impact of the Dharma, minimize the impact of Adharma. You cannot obliterate Adharma completely. Parikshit Maharaj therefore gives space, you also live.
Krishna went to the Kauravas and said give them five villages, you also live. So Dharmic people cannot be violent, but they should be fighting for justice. Himsa and Nyaya, they are two different things.
Therefore, there is no question of losing our hope. I said always from chaos we come to order, from darkness we come to light, from mortality we come to immortality. That is what, therefore, what is Dharma? Basically you fight, your Dharma will be protected because Dharma will never be destroyed.
It’s an eternal concept. By you fighting you’ll get the credit. For the Supreme Lord who’s residing in the spiritual world, what is this left and what is this right? Does it matter from the eternal perspective? Even the left are very right only because they are also full of knowledge, full of bliss, full of eternality.
So therefore, how can you hate them? How can you think about destroying and finishing them off? No. So we should have the spirit of the Pandavas and Arjunas while knowing that I cannot completely wipe out Adharma and then it is not material world only and you can’t also. Forget Adharma fighting, left is sitting in my heart only.
There is so much left in my own heart only. So where is left outside? Left is inside only. So much of left is inside.
So in a sense, what you’re saying is, we have our Dharma to do and we do it and Krishna has his plan, whatever role he gives us, in that plan we will work. And we do see that, like what you said, the internet Hindus are there. They are also quite intelligent and young articulate people are also coming.
So yes, it is, I read one, I’ll conclude with this point and we can just summarize or let’s have some last few words. There is one quite a good author who’s written a book on Hinduism, a survey of Hinduism by Klaus Klostermer. So he said that Hinduism is often defined by charismatic gurus, but it will be sustained by its rational teachers.
So he said that there will be gurus who will come, they will bring a lot of followers, they stay for some time and they will go. But if there are more and more people who present Hinduism rationally, that will actually not only preserve but become like Hinduism’s contribution to the 21st century. So I think that is something.
That rationalism is there even in the coward boy. That rationalism is there in a fisherman also. As much as the rational intellectual represents Hinduism in a bigger university, in a ground level, we have so many people who represent Tukara Maharaj, who represent Kanak Das, who represent Sautamali, who represent Narottam Das Thakur, who represent Govind Das in Bengaluru.
They represent both ways. The socialistic Hinduism and the classical Hinduism, they co-exist. That is what our discussion was.
We are left also, we are right also because we are Dharmic. Prabhupada says in Nectar of Devotion that even an illiterate Indian villager knows about the principle of karma and reincarnation. And in that sense, universal knowledge from the top to the bottom of society.
Should I try to quickly summarize? You will recollect this much. But I started by talking about how democracy represents humility in the system of governance. And then you said that that’s what we had in India because there was knowledge at the top and at the bottom, whether it is like epics like Ramayana being rendered in vernacular languages, or even knowledge based, working knowledge of astronomy and other meteorology and other things, which was there with the experts and the common people.
So this democratization of knowledge, which can say, which can say represents power. This was there in various fields, systems of governance, but also they were distributed. So every village was self-sufficient and every village had its, even within village, each community, they had their own hierarchy and people could rise and succeed and get their own sense of identity there.
So the king, there was capitalism in the sense that the kings had power, but the king’s power was not in making laws, which apply for everyone, but preserving the laws, which were defined by different people, according to their particular local systems or local customs. So we had, we could say almost like left values at the bottom level and right values at the top level. And the idea of taking individual responsibility, the beautiful point you said that our limitations are temporary, but our potentials are our own, they are lasting because at the core, we are souls.
So with this understanding, there is the assertion of the individual, the dignity of the individual was also a part of not just something that came in Judeo-Christian tradition, but it was there in our tradition also. And that’s how we have, when great saintly people were targeted and victimized, then they didn’t expect some rescuer to come, but they withstood it. And they themselves rose to glory.
And whenever there was, because power was decentralized, whenever there was abuse of power also, it was more of an individual abusing power rather than the whole system exploiting someone. And that’s why we have the works of the persecuted saints also available as a legacy today. It’s not wiped out.
And we discussed elaborately about the caste system. So the caste system is pursued as discriminatory, but within each caste also, people had their dignity. And like you said that Guha was a King, although he was in one sense outcast and the Maharaj was a King.
So they were, Manu says that every Varna should be independent and people had their respect. So to some extent, the imposition of an external definition of success leads to the perception that caste system was very discriminatory, but the caste system gave autonomy for people to succeed along different channels. And to the extent there was discrimination, we discussed, especially against those who were handling say human refuse, human excreta.
So that was unfortunate, but even that was not to that greater extent because the systems of sanitation were different in the past. And that is also exaggerated as far as then whatever discrimination is there, that’s a universal human evil that every country and every civilization is prone to. So we can’t label a civilization as bad.
We can look at the bad in the civilization and see how it can be rectified. And there was a tradition of reform quite actively in India also, whenever caste discrimination came up. And then we compared, say with respect to the left and the right.
So the left has become very influential. And you said the left can be more violent than even terrorists because it’s very subtle and sophisticated. So they put family members against family members, see family as a system of tyranny or nation as a system of tyranny, religion as a system of tyranny and in replacing that, they themselves centralize power.
So quite often, the left starts with love for the poor, but it ends up with hatred for the wealthy. And something that is driven by hatred, that cannot really solve any problems that will only aggravate problems. And even if some people are virtuous within that, and they really redistribute wealth and redistribute things well, but they will be replaced by someone else will be tyrannical.
So in that sense, distributing are evoking individuals to grow by taking responsibility. That’s the way forward. And then we discussed why has the left become so powerful? One major reason is they had a long term vision by which they penetrated the centers of influence, the universities, the media.
And we, as a dharmic traditions, we could say the right focused more on the visible centers of piety like temples. And there was also the separation of the priesthood from scholarship. And so that’s why when now the younger generation, as they go into the education system, they may have some faith, which they got from their, as you said, right wing, they are right wing faith, but they have left wing values or psychologically, they are like that.
And that becomes very disruptive. So the way ahead will be that we see there are internet Hindus who are coming up and there are people from the STEM fields who are now awakening and trying to understand and share their dharma. And also we, as individuals, we understand that the battle between good and evil is eternal.
And we have to play our part in that. And if we keep playing our part, not with the goal of eliminating evil, we don’t, it’s not like violence to destroy, but we want to have justice so that there is a fair representation of things. So if we do our part, then Krishna has a plan and Krishna will use us in his plan, the way that he sees fit.
And then the last one, more important than charismatic gurus are say rational presentation of spirituality from the top to the bottom hierarchically or not hierarchically, but systematically that rationality can be taught. And then that can actually lead to some overall change in society. Anything you’d like to add or conclude? I’m just amazed by recollecting.
This is called a Sutra, Sutradhar. The word Sutra comes from the principle of connecting everything from the beginning of the discussion, middle of the discussion and the conclusion of the discussion. So we need, therefore the word Sutra basically, which is there in the, I’ll conclude with this.
The cabinet what Bhishma Deva talks in the democratical kingship. No, the ministers, as I said, the lawmakers rather than law executors, they are the makers represented by the people. And then King would keep and he would say, he says the representation of only three Brahmanas, because Brahmana can give vision, but he cannot execute.
Three Brahmanas or three or four, eleven Kshatriyas, because we need to protect what the vision is given. 21 Vaishyas, you can say that is capitalism. To create capital, 21 Vaishyas and four Shudras.
How many? Four Shudras. Only four. Only four Shudras.
Because they are so, see their skill is so great in regards to talking about, you know, again the number did not matter because the resources, what is most important. If the resources are not there, what is the point of having more number? Because Vaishya always, capitalism, Lakshmi always reigns over in one sense Narayan also. If there is no Lakshmi, if there is no resources, what will you protect? If there is no resources, what intellectual will you give? If there are no resources, what skill will you provide? And one Suta, again, it is not lobbying about the caste, it is perfect representation of that knowledge.
And there was no voting in this regard. A Suta was the one who would basically keep, you know, bring out the stories from the past. Oh, this was done and therefore, so he had the power to undo even what has been presented by a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra.
He was a Sutradhar, he was a collector. Suta means to thread it all. Oh, no.
Sutradhar was different from the caste. That was the thread. That’s beautiful.
Yeah, they are not Suta. Sutras are not Brahmanas. Yeah, that’s true.
They are mixed caste. But they are the most powerful, you know. Now, if you study Suta, the Suta has been translated in English as carpenter.
Carpenter. Oh, that doesn’t make much sense. Son of a carpenter.
In Karna’s definition, if you read Gangulis or Dattas, you know, it is translated as son of a carpenter. Oh, I’ve read in English. Yeah.
So, what happened in the Nirukta dictionary, there is some connection to tradition to carpenter, but the Suta word, here Suta Goswami was a Suta. Okay. Yeah.
So, Suta, you are saying that Sumantara is a Suta. You are saying it is like oversimplified and distorted. Yeah, one story.
Then you give over emphasis on that statement over the other statement. Then you always say Suta means a carpenter. Therefore, he was discriminated.
Karna was the son of a carpenter. Therefore, he was discriminated. So, therefore, you know, this is very important.
What you brought out the whole, you know, recap is what we need more Sutradars to speak about the past, to speak about the present and to seek the potential future. No, thank you very much. It was great talking to you.
No, I learned so much and I mean very stimulating discussion. I hope we can have future discussions again sometime, but it has been very illuminating. Thank you very much for your time.
Because we don’t hate left, we don’t blindly follow right because everybody grow and be happy rather than hate each other.