Cash for Pregnancy: When Love Gets Political
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. I'm Puja. I'm a software engineer working in Bangalore. My question is about, nowadays, we are hearing about heat waves in India, and on the same hand, I have heard a recent announcement made by the CM of Andhra Pradesh to pay a one-time incentive of 30,000 on having a third child and 40,000 on having a fourth child for encouraging population growth.
And on the other hand, Amsterdam in the Netherlands becomes the first capital city to ban public advertisements on meat products and fossil fuels. So, even a small country like the Netherlands is becoming more conscious about climate change, and India seems to be moving in the other direction, more ignorant about climate change and population growth. So, how can we understand these two events on the same?
Acharya Prashant: There's nothing to understand here. There are directions in front of the ego, and every such direction is an option with a rationale, a justification. Whatever options you have in life to choose from, they all carry some argument in their favor, and then you choose which argument to prefer. There is the argument of narrowness, and there is the argument of wideness. There is the shrinking ego. There is the expansive ego. It's a choice to be made.
If you'll go to a person and say, “Why did you make a particular choice?” he will always have something in defense of that choice. Always.
You see, I belong to a southern state, and the southern states are losing representation in the Parliament because they are being outnumbered by the northern states. That's why we are incentivizing women to have more kids.
There would always be an argument, and prima facie, all arguments carry some value. There is logic in this argument. It's not a made-up thing. It is true. Yes. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, the birth rates there have reduced by a far greater degree than what the North has accomplished. Right? And instead of being applauded and incentivized for that, what the southern states are finding is that they might be losing proportional representation in the new Lok Sabha post the delimitation exercise. So, you would understand where the move is coming from.
Additionally, there is the threat that if the population grows old and not enough babies are born, then you'll have to import manpower from elsewhere. You understand that? When the birth rate is low, then, on an average, what you have is an aging population. Because people will grow old, and when people age in general, that means a more affluent society, as you have in Europe or Japan. They're aging societies, but they're also more affluent. However, what they then lack is young muscle power. And when you lack that, what do you have to do? You have to import that from elsewhere, and that changes the demographic map. So, that sounds like a threat, and when that reason is quoted, you cannot dismiss that reason. You will say, yes, yes, yes, I see. So, there is logic.
The question is that the ego does not work on logic. Logic is never the first priority. The first priority of the ego is self-preservation. Self-preservation.
The unloving ego, the dark ego, will use sound logic in a way that preserves the ego. The logic will be sound. The intention won't. The logic would be entirely correct. What is missing is not the logic, but the intention. What is prevailing is not, let's say, lack of love, but narrowness of love.
Yes, you have some feeling for your place, for your land, for your people. So, you want them to multiply. We understand. Fine. Noble enough. We are not saying you don't have love. What we are saying is your love is narrow. The domain of your love isn't vast enough to cover the entire country, let alone the entire planet.
What you're saying is, “My people should not reduce in number,” which is understandable. I'm not here to dispute that. We all want our kith and kin to multiply, prosper. We all want that, right?
I understand that what I am pointing at is the narrowness of the approach. And that's the narrowness every person on this planet is carrying, every family, every home is carrying, and every nation is carrying.
“If I reduce my carbon emissions, the neighboring country will start dominating me. So, I cannot reduce my emissions.” Now, you could say this is patriotism. This is patriotism and is therefore noble and right. Right? Prima facie, this is a patriotic value. I want my country to never surrender to the hostile neighbor. Therefore, I'll keep spending on modernization of the army and, you know, the armed forces. They are responsible for massive carbon emissions that are not even counted, that are not even sought to be reduced.
So, we cannot deny that there is a genuine feeling of patriotism involved here. Yes, there is. But this genuineness is narrow. You are caring for a specific part of the world without seeing what your actions would do to the entire world.
“Oh, Muslims are multiplying, so let the Hindus reproduce.”
And each of them multiplies. And what does that do to the planet?
“No, we can stop our numbers, but you first talk to them.”
And they say, “Oh, we can do that, but you first talk to them.”
And in this race, what happens to the billions of other species that we don't want to talk of? So, the concern is real but narrow. This narrowness is the problem. I love, but only four people. Not that I'm unloving, I'm selectively loving. That's the problem. And for the sake of these four people, I can do whatever is needed. I can slaughter, I can butcher, I can kill, I can steal, I can rob, I can emit, I can burn, I can destroy because I love these four people. So, your love is real but very narrow. And that's the problem.
And if you'll go deeper into it, then you'll have to encounter something uncomfortable. So far, we have said that love is real but narrow. Going deeper, you'll have to admit narrow love is not love at all. Narrow love is another name for violence. Narrow love is a socially acceptable name for violence because nobody would say he is violent, right? They'll simply say, “Oh, we love, but narrowly.”
Who would say, “I have no love, no regards, no care, no feeling for anybody”? There would be nobody like this on the planet. “I care for my district. I care for my state. I care for my family. I care for my business. I care for my house. I care for those of my religion. I care for those of my ideology.” And this kind of care, which we have so far called narrow care, is actually just violence. Where else does violence come from? Narrow concerns. Narrow concerns become violence.
The Germans love their fatherland. The Russians love theirs. And what you get is the bloodiest conflict on the planet. The bloodiest, the most cruel, the supremely violent conflict arising from love. Arising from love. Love. Surely, this is not love. Narrow love is not love at all.
“Oh, I love my little one so much. I feed it chicken soup. For my baby the cow baby must be deprived of milk. I love my baby so much that I deprive the cow baby of the cow's milk.”
Superficially, this is love. Yes, of course it is. It feels inconsiderate, insensitive to say that this mother is an unloving one because, you see, for her baby, she's almost in tears. The baby has some fever, and she's so upset. She can feed that baby anything if it promises to relieve her of the fever. Chicken soup, lamb soup, man soup, whatever. This is love.
Our love is so violent. You love one language, and then you proscribe all others. “In my state, other languages are prohibited because I love my language.” Yes, superficially this sounds like love, but deeply this is so violent, exclusive love.
“Baby, you belong only to me na?”
Same thing, no?
Love basically means love that excludes.
“If you love me, you should not look at anybody else.” Now, this is violence. “If you are a good Muslim, you should not read the Gita. If you are a good Hindu, why did you touch the Quran?” What kind of exclusive scholarship is this? “I'm a scholar, but only when it comes to this narrow circle.” “Oh, I love wisdom literature, provided it comes in Arabic or Sanskrit.” What kind of love is this?
Exclusive love, circumscribed love, fenced love, barbed fence. Try to cross over, and you'll bleed. You'll be called an infidel or a traitor or unpatriotic or simply a cheat.
“Yeah, of course she fell down on the road. But why did you have to pick her up? If you want to pick them up, just let me know. I'll fall. Every time you want to pick a woman up, I'll fall.”
Both the genders, both ways. Not alleging anything. Don't look at me like that. Men probably do, in fact, even more of that, just in a different way. They create systems which make it mandatory for women to exclude. The biggest system is the four walls. Once you are inside the four walls, your love is limited by the four walls. That's the system. That's the institution. The man can go out. The woman doesn't even go out that much. And that's the biggest exclusion.
Do you see the psychological basis of all our conflicts?
We are not bad people, really. We are just narrowly good. We are not unloving. We are just exclusively loving. “I do love, but I love only two people.”
Questioner: So, my concern was, how is this even love, like offering 30,000 and 40,000? Mostly, people who will accept this incentive would be…
Acharya Prashant: There is the pregnant woman. You are offering her money. How is that not love? That is love. Now the baby will be born, and she'll have some money at hand. So, she'll be able to spend for herself and for the baby. So, that is love. That's what you call lok love.
Questioner: But incentive to get pregnant, she's not already pregnant.
Acharya Prashant: So, but getting pregnant is a good thing. That's what the female body is for. That's what is called as Lok Duty. Why else did God give you the body of a woman? So that you keep getting pregnant every six months. What else is the place of woman in this world? How else does Lok Dharma operate?
She can't think. She can't write. She can't run. She is no good at anything, right? The only thing that she can gainfully yield is babies. And that's what history has done to women, and that's the way they have been looked at.
And that's the reason, when you refuse to bear babies, your social worth falls. They say, “You are anyway not good for anything. What can you do? You know nothing. You can't be a leader. You can't be a manager. You can't be a good professional because you're a woman. The only thing that you can do, and men cannot, is bear babies. Now, if you refuse to bear even babies, then you have zero worth.”
What was the logic behind the Sati practice? Your worth is in relation to your womb, and only the husband can impregnate your womb. Now the husband is gone, you also die. Why are you alive at all? You have no independent worth anyway. The husband is gone, you also die.
So, that's happening all over the world. In fact, if you will just Google, you'll come to see there are so many countries which are incentivizing women, not just incentivizing them monetarily, but also psychologically. I think it's Russia where they are being given titles of Mother Queen and Empress and something, if they have eight kids or something. Then they'll be decorated at the town square because that's what the society wants from you, the womb. You cannot produce anything, so you produce babies and chapatis. That's what your whole worth is confined to.
Even the usual standards of beauty correlate so closely to fertility. Look at the way, look at the standards, look at the metrics that determine whether a woman is deemed socially beautiful, breasts, hips, all these are markers of fertility. They are markers of reproductive capacity. Even the face. In the face, what you're actually looking for is good fat, and that too is a marker of reproductive health. When you say, “Oh, she looks so beautiful. What a face and lovely skin and soft to touch,” and all those things, what else is that? Hair, again, a marker of reproductive function.
So, the entire worth has been concentrated in the womb. Entire worth.
Please go and check the psychological basis of what you call the lip liner, the lip gloss, the lipstick. Please look at the psychological root of it, and you'll be ashamed. What is it that you're trying to demonstrate as red? And women accept that. Fine.
Even a very mediocre kind of woman, the day she becomes a mother, she gains some social status. She starts getting some respect. So, fine.
All this has to be disowned. Disowned. If someone offers you a seat just because you are carrying a baby, refuse.
You deserve to be respected on your merit, on your love, on your courage, on your knowledge.
And if you are offered a seat on that basis, maybe you can accept. But someone says, “Oh, she's pregnant, help her.” No, that's not something really to be proud of. I'm not saying you should not help pregnant women. Please do that. But I'm speaking here to the women, not to the helpers.
You walk into a room and people stand up and offer you their seat because you are a great researcher, a great poet, a great scientist, a great artist, that's one thing. But you walk into a room and somebody offers you a seat because you are a woman, that is a totally different thing. And I think you should just reject it.
What does the state have to do with something as intimate as pregnancy? It belongs to the woman. It's a sovereign decision. At most, the man can be some kind of partner in that decision. But even the man's role is quite limited. Eighty to ninety percent of that belongs only to the woman. The man impregnates and withdraws. The woman carries it, then, not for months but for years. Even the man cannot have a big role, a big say, a huge voice in that matter. How come the state is stepping in and saying, “You get pregnant, I'll give you money”? What's going on?
This is a breach of not just privacy but intimacy. It's a matter so sacred that nobody should have a say in it. And when you are incentivizing something, you're entering it. You are entering a sacred spot you should not dare to touch.
It's like incentivizing somebody to love somebody. How does that sound? It's like incentivizing somebody to have sex. It's like incentivizing somebody to get fertilized. How does that sound? But all this that I'm saying sounds ugly only because I am baring it in front of you. It sounds ugly because I'm presenting it naked. That's not how it's presented in the social way or in the political way. There, it is presented as a celebration of motherhood. It's a celebration of motherhood.
And I'm nobody to deny that it is not a celebration of motherhood. It is a celebration of motherhood. But it is a narrow definition of motherhood. Narrow. The problem is the narrowness.
We are not unloving. We are just narrowly loving.
Nobody is truly unloving. I'll give you an example because you may not love somebody else, but don't you love your own life? Don't you love your own life? The moment you see danger somewhere, don't you run away? What does that mean? You love your life. So, nobody is totally unloving. We love at least one, two, or four people or some ideology or something or some myth or something. We do love, but our love is very narrow. If you have nobody else to love, you start loving your own ego. So, you're not totally unloving.
What we need is love that is expansive. Love that includes. Love that shines. And then it depends on the other whether or not to accept the shine. It is not the shine that imposes itself. It is the shine that presents itself. “I am available. I'm available.” Now, it depends on you whether you accept me, take it. It's your choice. My choice is to shine and radiate. Depends on whether you want to get it, take it, collect it, accept it, use it.
Questioner: Thank you, Acharya Ji. Thank you so much.
