How did Macaulay spoil our culture?
From D P Anjne
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Hare Krishna. Question from D.P. Anjaney Prabhu. How did Machiavelli ruin, spoil our culture? Answer, first and foremost, we shouldn't use this kind of analysis to blame anyone.
We are not interested in playing the blame game. So even when we want to point out somebody has done something wrong, the focus is on not the person but the process, hate not the sin, sinner but the sin. So we want to understand the process by which certain things happen and then we can see whether those processes are continuing today and what we can do to correct those processes.
By becoming fixated too much on a specific person, we don't serve any objective except developing negative emotions towards that person. So with respect to Machiavelli, rather than focusing on the purpose, I would focus on the British culture in India, the British rule in India and how that affected Indian culture. So India has been ruled by foreigners for a long time, almost thousand years.
But previously when the Muslims were ruling, normally every race has its own conception that we are superior and the ruled are inferior. The Muslims also had that idea. But the Indians, the word Hindu was not there at that time, especially initially when the Muslims came.
Gradually it came in the vocabulary. The followers of Vedic culture, although they considered in one sense the Muslims the political rulers, they had to, but still they did not consider them as intellectually superior. So unless there was forced conversions, most Vedic followers did not give up their culture.
The Muslims tried to destroy this culture by desecrating the deities in the temples. But still the culture went on quite strong because it was not intellectually challenged. And most people kept practicing, maybe a little bit, not so publicly, sometimes secretly, but they kept practicing.
Now when the Europeans came, they did not directly destroy any temples, but they destroyed the faith that made people go to the temples. How did they do that? By systematically criticizing the Vedic literature. Now even the Muslims had criticized the Vedic literature.
There are a few like Aurangzeb's brother, there are some people like that who appreciated the Vedic literature. He translated the Upanishads also. Al-Baruni appreciated the Vedic literature.
But most Muslims, they critiqued the Vedic literature. But still their criticism did not have much effect on the Vedic followers. However, when the Europeans came to India, firstly they had the power of technology and they had scientific developments with them.
That itself impressed the Indians, many Indians. And especially when they ruled India, they brought in western education with them. And this western education involved studying in English, not only the western literature, but also the English translations of the Vedic literature.
And the English translations were mostly done by western scholars or westernized scholars. And although for the first 50 to 100 years of the European contact with India, the western scholars were stunned, impressed by seeing the breadth and the depth of the Vedic literature and its wisdom. But as imperial motives took over, then their agenda shifted from just open-minded appreciation to narrow-minded subordination.
And for them, the study and the translation of the Vedic literature became a tool for promoting their agenda of imperialism. And along with this imperialism also came the religious evangelism. So, from the political point of view, the Europeans wanted to, Britishers wanted to rule India.
And the Europe, especially Britain, that part, Britain, France, that part was under Protestant Christianity, the Anglican Church. And they wanted to evangelize and Christianize India. And both felt that we can do this by subordinating the Indians intellectually.
And for that, in many ways, both of them combined forces and they translated the Vedic literature in a way in which the Indians who studied these translations of the Vedic literature lost respect for their own literature and their own culture along with it. Now, there were scholars like Max Muller who were primary in this kind of agenda-driven, self-serving translation initiative. But Machiavelli and people like him, those who were involved in political and administrative influence, they very actively supported the agenda of subordination of India.
So, the British logic was that they were few in number. The country itself is, they are few in number. And most Britishers considered Indian conditions to be very primitive.
And most Britishers did not like the prospect of coming to India and live. Unlike Muslim rulers who made India itself their residence. Most Europeans, Britishers did not like that.
So, they felt we want to rule India, but we want as less Britishers to come to India as possible. Our population is less and our people also don't want to go there. So, the only way we can rule India is, if we can make between the Indian masses and ourselves elite group of elite Indian people, elite not in the sense that we will respect them, but elite in the sense that the rest of society will respect them and they will follow our commands.
And this was done through the educational system. So, the educational system was arranged in such a way that people, instead of being trained to be independently thoughtful, were basically trained to be clerks, to be servants, to be just those who will carry out the orders. And in this agenda, there was a huge amount of mistranslation and misrepresentation of the Vedic literature.
So, because it was politically driven and it was evangelically, religiously driven, so, it received a lot of funds, lot of support. And there were, for example, in the Calcutta College, Devamrith Maharajan Book Searching for Vedic India was written. There was a Calcutta Sanskrit College.
And there, the chair, the department head, they would give awards for the students who had to come and the best refutation of the Hindu religious system. So, the whole idea is, you write and then you will get substantial awards. And sometimes the amount of the awards was more than practically a several months salary of an average professor.
So, in this way, there was a huge amount of literature which denigrated the Vedic literature and the Vedic culture. And that's what led to the Indian mainstream largely looking down on their own culture and imitating the West. So, even today, Indians are infatuated with the West.
And even after India became independent, Indians' independent struggle had two kinds of leaders within them. One was those who were, those who, along with political independence, wanted cultural independence also, so that India could establish its own culture. And the others were those who wanted political independence, but were enamored by the Western culture.
And somehow, by political upheavals, the second group of leaders, they came to power. And that's how India, on August 15, 1947, became politically independent, but remained culturally a slave. And even today, India is widely accepted that a successful India has to be a copycat of the West.
This is unfortunate. But over a period of time, as Srila Prabhupada and spiritual leaders like him have presented the Vedic tradition, so slowly but gradually, the damage that has been done is being countered. But much more needs to be done.
Even today, most Indians don't know about the intellectual depth of their own tradition. And many people re-examine their tradition with fresh inquisitive eyes only when they see people from the West practicing this culture. And then they say, oh, there must be something special in this.
So, if, as ISKCON is trying to do, if many intellectuals join this effort of intellectually understanding our own glorious cultural and spiritual heritage and then adapting it to our times and then implementing it and sharing it with others, then India can become a spiritual superpower which can give spiritual light to the whole world. Thank you. Hare Krishna.