Vivekananda’s agenda for India: Development with culture
Vivekananda foresaw the rise
of India
A rishi that he was,
Vivekananda foresaw the rise of India as a
global power a century before it began. When the world had written off the
Hindu religion as worthless, Indian civilisation as dead, and Indians as
slaves, the young seer said, “I do not see into the future; nor do I care to
see. But one vision I see as clear as life before me is that the ancient mother
has awakened once more, sitting on her throne more glorious than ever. Proclaim
her to the entire world with the voice of peace and benediction.”
The young sanyasi’s vision then would have been dismissed then as brain
disorder. But today as the nation is preparing for his 150th birth anniversary,
like many other think tanks have prognosticated, the National Intelligence
Council of US said last month that, by 2030, India will overtake China and will
emerge as one of the three world powers, with US and China.
Swami Vivekananda knew that India was not an underperforming nation in
the past. He knew its potential. Had he known that Indians were underperforming
and inefficient people, a man of great intellectual independence, he would
clearly have told them so. He saw India as a fallen nation, because of absence
of qualities needed to face up to its challenges. He therefore saw in the
Indian past the critical guide for its future. He therefore told the Indians to
look to the past for inspiration, for spiritual enlightenment and intellectual
ideas. postulated that Hindu India needed fearlessness, spiritual patriotism,
moral and physical strength, unity, freedom, education, respect for women and
an army of dedicated men and women to accomplish all these for removal of
hunger and poverty and to rise as Vishwa Guru – Preceptor the world. Half a
century after
Vivekananda India got freedom. A century later India began
rising.
That India is now a rising global economic, political and military power is
undisputed. The rise of resurgent India in geo-politics started with the
Pokharan atomic explosion in 1998. This single event created the
phenomenon of Indian diaspora abroad.
Swami Vivekananda wanted India to
develop science and power. The atomic programme of India represented both. The
West could not ignore a nuclear India in the 21st century just as it could not
ignore a nuclear China even in the Cold War days. The rise of India as an
economic power started in about 2003-04 when domestic economic forces drove
India’s development in a manner unprecedented in the history of economic
development. Data for the last couple of decades of economic liberalisation
reveals that the Indian economic development was largely driven by domestic
savings, domestic investment and domestic demand. This distinguished the Indian
model generally from the South East Asian and Chinese models which were rooted
in export-led and FDI-led growth.
Development with culture and spiritual emphasis
But did
Swami Vivekananda want India developed economically and become
like the West? Obviously not. He wanted India to develop economically and
otherwise but differently. This is evident from what
Swami Vivekananda
told India and what he told America. Even as he told India to develop
economically, scientifically and generally materially, he turned to America
that was fast rising then and prophetically told the Americans that they should
import spiritualism from India to handle the ill-effects of their material
prosperity. The rich America did not listen to the Indian mendicant. Result.
Today half the American families are broken, 41 percent of the US babies born
are to unwed mothers, and 55 per cent of American first marriages, 67 per cent
of the second and 74 per cent of the third marriages end in divorce – all
indices of the huge spiritual crisis in US.
When Eleanor Stark of US wrote in her book titled “The Gift Unopened” that
Vivekananda
was the unique gift for mankind that was still not opened, she was particularly
true of US. Fortunately for India, because of the sustained work done by those
inspired by
Swami Vivekananda India – from the Ramakrishna Mission to
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – India has not only kept alive the spiritual
elements of the Indian public and private life but also deepened the
spiritual emphasis of Indian culture, society, and civilisation. And this is
precisely what he wanted India to achieve, namely economic development with its
spiritual, cultural emphasis. The challenge before India as a rising economic
power and also its purpose to present to the world is an alternative economic
model.
India’s confidence was undermined by colonial scholarship
The single most critical question which had tormented the Indian establishment
consisting of most thinkers, intellectuals, academics, political leaders,
policy makers, economists, sociologists of India since Independence is whether
the Indian religions, culture, traditions, lifestyle and values are compatible
with contemporary times, particularly for economic development. This was
because in free India’s discourse, the proponents of our sense of this ancient
nation, Hindu philosophy, culture and lifestyle had always been on the
defensive for the last several decades because the colonialists had made us
believe that the West was always advanced in economics and technology and we
were always backward in both. Since soft India was militarily conquered and
colonised, the colonial and the other Western thinkers, consistenly labelled
India as barbaric [Wm. Archer]Winston Churchil], or as semi-barbaric [Karl
Marx], or as disqualified for development in modern capitalism because of Hindu
and Buddhist beliefs [Max Weber] or as a functioning ararchy [JK Galbraith] and
exerted great negative influence on the Indian mind and on Indians’ opinion
about India. Of them, according to studies, Karl Marx and Max Weber, neither of
whom visited India nor otherwise deeply familiar with Hindu culture and
traditions, have exerted the greatest influence on Indian academic and
intellectual establishment.
The continuing tsunami of such negative academic and intellectual vibrations
devalued Hindu philosophy, culture, society, traditions and values in the mind
of the Indian scholars and rated them as backward and unsuitable for
contemporary world. A well-known Indian economist Dr Raj Krishna even
described, as late as in 1978, the moderate GDP growth rate of India as ‘Hindu
Growth Rate’ This term was later popularised by the then World Bank chief
McNamara to say that India would always survive on aid from West and deride
India. Undeniably the Indian mind was dominantly influenced by Western scholars
and philosophers. It is this mentality of looking at us through the prism of
the aliens which
Swami Vivekananda challenged. He asked India to look
within. But this did not happen till the West began to look at itself and at
India and generally Asia.
The U-turn – Western scholars now disprove the detractors
With the result, what
Vivekananda wanted India to do, namely to look at
itself and not the West, in the last decade or thereabouts, the perception of
the West about India and therefore about Indians about India has undergone a
change. With the rise of Japan in 1970s, of the East Asian nations in 1980s, of
China in 1990s and of India at the dawn of the 21st century, a huge
geo-political and cultural power shift has been taking place in the world from
Euro-American West to Asia. The assumption in, and of, the West till Asia rose
was that West was the First [rate] World and the rest belonged to the Second and
Third [rate] Worlds. The rise of Asia, Japan first, prompted the Western
scholars study whether such rise was founded on any potential inherent in them.
On such study, Paul Bairoch, a Belgian economist, came out with his stunning
finding that as late as in 1750, India, with 24.5% and China with 33% had a
combined share of 57.5% of global GDP, when the share of Britain was 1.8% and
that of US just 0.1%. This led to two huge debates in the West. One, whether
the West had a lesser standard of living compared to Asia as late as in 18th
century; two, whether the rise of West was due to any superior qualities or
capabilities inherent in it, or, it was just exploitation of its colonies.
Based on Bairoch’s study some historians like Ferdinand Braudel said that the standard
of living of the West was not higher than that of Asia before
industrialisation.
Some felt that the West exploited the Rest and particularly Asia and grew and
others differed.
As if to resolve the debate, the Organisation for Economic Development and
Co-operation [OECD] a forum of developed nations of the world, constituted a
study – the Development Studies Institute – under Angus Maddison, a great
economic historian, to study, in substance, whether Paul Bairoch was right.
Angus Maddison, who felt at the start that Bairoch was unlikely to be correct,
ended up endorsing him completely. In his study ‘World Economic History – A
Millennial Perspective’ [12], Maddison not only confirmed Bairoch, but
went on to say that India was the world economic leader for 17 centuries from
the beginning of the Common Era, with China, which overtook India later, as No
2. And after CE 1800, both of them lost out – with India crashing to 1.8% and
China 6.2% in 1900. As the British Historian William Dalrymple wrote, the
current rise of India is not a rags to riches story, but that of an empire,
which had lost out temporarily, striking back to acquire its due position in
the world. These studies have completely disproved the views of Marx and Weber,
Galbraith and Raj Krishna and also established that the Indian culture and way
of life could and did build a successful globally powerful economic model for
India. So, India rich in cultural heritage was also economically prosperous. It
was therefore canards spread by colonial scholars that Indian culture and
traditions were incompatible with economic prosperity.
Spirituality, Culture and Development
Swami Vivekananda’s emphasis on spirituality, culture and development is
clearly incorporated in Indian model of development. How the cultural value of
society and family influence over the individual is not just a theoretical idea
but an effective functioning economic and commercial value is brought out in a
commercial research to sell products, which says “In India, social acceptability
is more important that individual achievement and is given priority in an
individual’s life. Group affiliations are given precedence with family
traditions and values. For most Indians, family is the prime concern and an
individual’s duties lies with the family. In India people’s search for security
and prestige lies within the confines of the near and dear”. It is traditional
cultural values which have sustained the Indian family, society and economy,
even when the Indian state had remained hostile to our dharma for almost a
millennia, and continues to be even today. These values constitute the
social, cultural, and civilisational capital of India.
This cultural orientation is self-evident in the Indian economy. The family
savings in India which is the direct product of family culture is now 25% of
the GDP and according to Goldman Sachs, a top global banker, this has ensured
that India does not need foreign investment for its infrastructure development.
Since 1991 to 2011 the amount of foreign investment that has funded Indian
development was only 2% of the total; while the rest 98% has been funded by
local savings in which the family tops with 70% of the national savings. It is
the culture of protection of the elders, care of young and the responsibilities
which the family undertakes as a cultural institutions, and the disciplining of
the relations between humans and between humans and nature through the concept
of dharma and sustained by culture that has protected our economy and society.
In contrast, in the West, the care of the parents, unemployed and the infirm
are all the concern of the state. All family obligations are nationalised in
the West, while it is dharma and culture founded on dharma which takes care of
all family obligations.
What values the West needs from Hindu India today are what is precisely at risk
in India
The West needs to learn from Hindu India’s culural values
(i) To rebuild and protect the family and social foundations of its economy,
(ii) To reinstate reverence for nature and
(iii) To revive respect for women. Individual rights, gender rights, children’s
rights, elders’ rights, and other rights consciousness have undermined the
respect for women and brought down the sustaining structures of the family and
caused lack of reverence for nature in the Judeo-Christian Western civilisation
and led to the current environmental crisis. Though, fortunately in India,
these sustaining values – family and society, respect for women and reverence
for nature – are still functioning form, they are at great risk because of the
continuation of colonial mindset through the intensification of the process of
westernisation of the Indian intellectual, educational and media and generally
the secular establishment, in the name of modernisation which is just an alibi
for westernisation. The Indian intellectual establishment is unable to draw the
line between the individual belief system and the country’s ethos and way of
life, it tends to throw the baby out with the bath tub – namely discard
national culture as conflicting with secularism, which according to the Supreme
court it does not.
Conclusion
Because of the Indian establishment’s lack of intellectual and political
courage and because of the concept of politcal correctness, the very
spiritual and moral values which
Swami Vivekananda emphasised and which
sustain the Indian family, society, economy and environment and which the West
desperately needs to import from India for its own good and even survival, are
at risk in India. The public discourse promoted by the politically correct
establishment is making it fashionable to follow the very western model which
has brought down families, societies and economy; undermined the respect for
women and made them carbon-copy the West and fight for their rights at the cost
of respect; and destroyed reverence for nature which has invited the global
environmental crisis. Indian people need to reinforce their conviction in those
spiritual and moral values which most of them practise even today and the young
India must be made to imbibe these values, first in the interest of the Indian
economy, society, and environment, before India can teach these values to the
West.
The world – particularly the Western world – is keen to follow our values and
is already following it. Lisa Miller, the religious affairs editor of Newsweek
magazine wrote a stunning article on August 14, 2009 titled “We are All Hindus
now” referring to the changing American beliefs. She said that data shows ‘we
are becoming more like Hindus and less like Christians in the ways we think
about God, our selves, each other, and eternity; 65 per cent of us believe –
like Hindus – that “many religions can lead to eternal life”; they include 37
per cent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation
is theirs alone; a third of the Americans burn, not bury the dead; a quarter of
the American believe in rebirth. The West needs us, and imports, our spiritual
and cultural assets. Is not that Dhrshta
Swami Vivekananda proving
right? Is not America now opening the gift from
Swami Vivekananda it had
kept unopened for over a century? But ironically when the West is looking at
us, many of our intellectuals, academics and thinkers are looking to the West!
QED: To make young Indian consciously imbibe Hindu cultural values as
Swami Vivekananda
emphasised which contemporary India largely follows is the biggest agenda of
India and also its challenge.
