How to Make India Invincible?
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. When the question of Indianness comes, I have historical questions. Like my friend said, there was a time when we used to lead in the fields of technology, science, medicine, trade, education and what not. It should have been the case that we should have led, but it happened that we became slaves of foreign powers. And it's not also the case that they were much in numbers. They were a very small population, and they enslaved us.
Acharya Prashant: Apply your common sense. Is it possible that the America of today is enslaved by, let's say, Cuba? Possible? They have tensions with Venezuela. Is it possible that Venezuela of today colonizes the US? Is it possible? Please tell me.
But we say India was a superpower in all possible terms, and yet those lowly little Britons came here and colonized us. Is it possible? There is something fishy in the story, right? And we don't want to go back and really read and figure out what really happened. We believe in this narrative: we were great, we were ‘Vishwaguru,’ we were ‘Sone ki chidiya.’ This happened, then these uncultured, uncouth people came here, and they came here and through tricks and treachery they enslaved us. Like, seriously?
Questioner: But not only Britain, but also the Turks, the Mughals.
Acharya Prashant: Exactly. So Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Zimbabwe, Congo, each of them is taking turns to colonize the US. Is that ever going to happen? Please tell me. Can that happen? There is something wrong with the story.
Now let me tell you: when the Brits landed here, India's per capita GDP was already at least 30% lower than that of Britain. We stood at per capita 700. They stood at per capita 1,000. The last time Indians were actually more prosperous than Europeans was in the 10th century CE or AD. That was the last time.
So that fall does not begin with the arrival of the Dutch or the Portuguese or the Spaniards or the French. The fall does not begin there. The fall had begun much earlier, but we don't want to admit that. And the reasons are very interesting why we don't want to admit that the fall had begun much earlier. Because the reasons that initiated the fall, the things that initiated that fall, are the exact things that are at the center of current Indian culture.
If you will admit, truly admit, what initiated India's fall, you'll also have to admit that your current cultural paradigms are all misplaced. That which you have today is what initiated India's fall 1,100 years back.
That also brings us to a threatening observation. If what initiated India's fall 1,100 years back is present even today, what is likely even today? This thing that we have today is the exact thing, right, that initiated India's fall? And if it is present even today, what does that mean for India's, please tell me, safety, security, sovereignty today? What does that mean? We are still very much in danger.
It was due to internal reasons that we got defeated and enslaved. And the internal reasons that got us defeated and enslaved are still very much present today, which means we are not safe, and the fault is entirely our own.
You know what started in the 10th century? India; just before the 10th century, you know of Acharya Shankar, right? What he did was, and I'm talking more of the psychological aspects of it, so we are able to understand more clearly; he brought back power to the individual, because that's what your Vedic literature is about. Vedanta is the very peak of the Vedic corpus. Vedanta is what contains the philosophy of the Vedas. And Shankaracharya clarified what Vedanta means. He said it means that you are inseparable from the highest that there can be. And that's called non-duality, Advaita, non-duality.
Non-duality means no separation possible, which means that you carry your highest potential within yourself.
Look at the implications of that. That means you don't have to bow down to any external power.
Now, this was something that would have outrightly prevented India from surrendering, because surrender is made impossible by Vedanta. You cannot surrender to anybody outside of you because the highest is within you. Which means you cannot be pulled, kicked away, terrified, pressurized. Nothing of that is possible when it comes to the native highest Indian philosophy.
That also means that you don't have to look at the heavens for guidance. That means that you have to look inwards for guidance, because the highest source of illumination is within. Which also means that you don't have to submit yourself to priests and to social authorities. Why should I listen to priests and the social authorities when the highest is within?
But just after the 10th century, a strange kind of fatalism starts creeping in. The same priestly class that would have been greatly threatened by non-duality returns with a vengeance, philosophical vengeance. It says, no. What Vedanta says that your destiny is controlled by somebody else, that there is some overlord in the skies and he is deciding what is happening on the earth. Whereas this is a total distortion of Vedanta.
What Vedanta simply says: the greatest Truth is the Self, and there is nothing beyond the Self. You are that Self. And if you think of anything, if you think of yourself as anything apart from that Self, the Atman then that is Maya. It is from there that the great *Mahavakya, “ahaṁ brahmāsmi,” arises. I am That. And you too are That, “tat tvam asi.” That (pointing towards the sky) is not That. I am That.
Now, this is very empowering. Do you see this? Do you see this? But after this, a strange kind of fatalism starts, where you start saying, “No, no, the greatest power sits up there.” And that was a total distortion, I repeat, of Vedanta. And once that starts, you can be broken. You will surrender. You will say, you know, now that I have chosen one power outside of me, obviously, I can surrender to other powers as well, because surrender is now possible.
Surrender is possible even in core Vedanta, but that surrender is only to your own highest potentiality. Instead of that, Indians were told to surrender to all kinds of power outside of you. And we became fatalistic.
We became fatalistic because now you do not control your life, somebody else does. We became fatalistic. Do you see this?
Otherwise, how can the land of the Gita be ever defeated? Shri Krishna isn't telling Arjun to win. He's telling him to fight. The land of the Gita would have fought to its death, said, fine, I can die, but I cannot be defeated. I'll die fighting. We didn't die fighting. We simply surrendered.
You have Kolkata here next door. Clive had 3,000 men, and they were not even proper fighters. A lot of them were simply the guards of Fort William, because the East India Company couldn't have had soldiers. It was a company. Companies don't have soldiers. Do companies have soldiers? No.
What they had were actually well-trained and well-armed guards, and Siraj-ud-Daulah had 50,000 of them. How can so many be defeated? Please think. It's like Mauritius colonizing the USSR. Is it possible? Something was happening, and we were not being clearly told what was happening. Something is being hidden from us in history, and we are not asking, “What?” We are just believing the narrative. We were great, but these tricksters came to us and they defeated us through cunning. It was not just through cunning. Yes, they were cunning people. Yes, we know they were. We also know that the Brits had bribed a lot of the functionaries of the Nawab. We know that. Yes.
But this great landmass that consisted of the entire stretch from Burma till Afghanistan at that time couldn't have been colonized only through treachery. Do you agree? Please, let's be logical. There was much more than that to it.
Recently, I compared India's obsession with astrology to the Western advancements in astronomy. Do you see how related astrology is to fatalism? Do you see that? “Somebody else controls my fate. So please look at my horoscope, because my life is controlled by somebody else.” That's what dictates us. Somebody else is the Lord, and he will decide how I will live, and what I will eat, and how I will vote, and how I will marry, and where I will settle. And that somebody might not necessarily be a person. It could be a situation. It could be a social order. It could be a belief system. But whatever it is, it is outside of me. It is not something of my own, and yet I succumb to it.
Now, the West was questioning the skies when we were praying to the skies, and it was precisely because of their astronomical advancements that they could, first of all, come to India. Remember, there was no great source of energy then except the winds. Starting from there, the tiny British Isles, they first would come to the Cape of Good Hope using just the winds, the trade winds, and then from there they would use the monsoon circuit to come to India. And all this was being done only through wind power. And imagine how they would be navigating. There was no GPS.
Now, latitude is easy to measure, but not longitude. So all astronomy was there to measure longitude accurately. And what were we doing then? Praying to the skies. “Please, please tell me whether the girl is mangalik. Which tree to worship next to get more wealth? Which Baba-ji to go to to get one more son?” And they were manufacturing, researching, observing, documenting.
India was not really defeated by the Brits. It was defeated by Greenwich, GMT. That's where the research lab was, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the astrolabe, and they were manufacturing mechanical chronometers. That's what got us enslaved, not just their treachery.
It's not as if we are very simple or innocent people, right? When it comes to treachery, we are not far behind, are we? Please, please. Are we far behind?
Listener: No.
Acharya Prashant: This entire city was developed by the British, Kolkata. This used to be a huge swamp. They first drained it out. Then there were three villages. They developed it as a port because they could see the potential. And then Siraj-ud-Daulah said, “Oh my God, they have developed it as a city.” So in 1756 he tried to capture it. In 1757, the East India Company struck back, and from there the enslavement of India was complete.
After that, you had the Battle of Buxar. Then there were the Anglo-Maratha wars, and India was gone, totally gone. Because once Bengal is won, and Bengal used to be the richest province at that time, once Bengal is won, huge resources open up. Do you understand what was happening?
Tell me, why is Kolkata still called the cultural capital of India in spite of its financial downfall? The per capita income in Kolkata is just a fraction of what it is in Bangalore or Hyderabad or even in Delhi, 25%, 40%. That's the number.
There were three villages, and then it became the London of the East. So many palaces they built here, and so much trading happened here. People from all parts of the world came. Even the Chinese came, because there was the promise of prosperity, and there was education. And because there was education, what kind of education? Not our traditional cultural education, but modern scientific education and education in liberal humanities.
It was because of that that you could have Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and eventually Rabindranath Tagore.
Please understand. Why did so many great social and religious reformers arise from Bengal, and Kolkata in particular? There is a reason there, something very fresh was brought by the British, and Kolkata was one of their first major enclaves. Therefore, Bengal had its Bengal Renaissance.
Why could we not have it on our own? Because we did have the intellectual capital. The reason is the kind of tradition and cultural practices that say you are fine if you are just following rituals. You don't need to read; you need to follow. And even if you are to read, you will read the various kinds of katha. You will not read philosophy. You will read stories. And stories are meant to deeply implant beliefs in your mind. All stories carry beliefs. The more you go through those stories, the more those beliefs penetrate your mind.
We have the greatest, highest philosophy that brings you back to yourself, but that philosophy was willfully ignored. Do you understand that?
