MY MOTHERLAND ... 7
We must not buy the decadent culture of the West. If anything is anti-national as such, it is this servile observance of their modes and manners, this pursuit of Mammon, this subservience of the Spirit to the demands of the flesh.
Sensory delight has never been the ideal of our race. The fleeting pleasures of life have never been regarded as worth so much that the highest purpose of life, that of Self-realisation, be subordinated to it. Our national ideal has always been this discovery of the Atman, and the entire fabric of our culture has been built round it. Therefore, to lose ourselves to the snares of western sensory culture is to go against the very grain of all that we have stood for as a civilisation down millenia and this, by definition, ought to be deemed anti-national if at all such an epithet ought to be applied to any section of our citizenry for their professed ideological stand within the polity.
Human evolution goes on along a sinusoidal curve where a rising wave of spiritualism is accompanied by a falling wave of materialism, and vice-versa in alternate terms. Accordingly, when the Spirit gains ascendancy in human society, sensory culture retreats into a corner, biding by time till it gets space enough for expansion of its terrain. This does not mean that rising spirituality in society necessarily brings in material poverty. Quite the reverse. What it brings in is the decline in attachment to matter, to the delights of the infatuating senses that cover up the consciousness of God. On the contrary, rising materialism clouds spiritual vision and brings about increased material attachment and its concomitant inevitable degeneration of character which contaminates and corrupts humanity to the core till the reverse spiritual current again rescues man and raises him to a level of enlightened existence.
Such are the dialectical dilemmas that periodically oscillate human society, when it is forced to take a call about its future direction, when more often than not such a choice also evaporates and the resolution of historical forces and the call of spiritual evolution and material compulsion chalk out the career of society and send it coursing to its destination.
The meandering paths of Maya with their infinite complexities and gradation in sectional possibilities in a fluctuating field of multitudinous elements of different attained levels of evolution do not quite permit instant salvation for a large mass of humanity. Culture being diversely distributed among the populations of the world, it never quite is a homogeneous development for all as the reference frames for societal motion differ widely from location to location along the face of this earth. Thus, as a cultural impulse what may be true and uplifting for one nation may not be so for another at a specific point in time, for the demands of group evolution, as per levels attained already, differ widely.
This ought to be the understanding when we view Indian culture as well. Ours has historically been preeminently a spiritual civilisation and no amount of going against this massive national current will be of any avail. The Ganga, flowing down the mountain slopes for ages has come into the fertile plains to bear the harvest of a new springtime and to attempt sending the rolling waves back to the mountainous source is to engage in an exercise in futility, an enterprise in foolishness. This latter allusion is being borrowed from the vast storehouse of Vivekananda literature, albeit in an altered linguistic representation. But the meaning of it is clear. India, from time immemorial, has adopted the path of the Spirit and trodden along it, holding fast to the Vedas which form the bedrock of the national civilisation, and this she has done through the vicissitudes of times, tiding over unnumbered material onslaughts in the form of repeated alien invasions and consequent enforced subversion of culture. Yet, she has clung to renunciation as the basis of her civilisation and she must eternally do so to be true to her heritage. Add to that ideal of renunciation the ideal of service and you have got the entire Vivekananda package for our civilisation's invincible onward march. Swamiji had enunciated service and renunciation as the twin national ideals and had blessed the nation with life immortal if it sticks to this dual principle. And so must we and not be lured away to imitate the West without discrimination or purpose.
Written by Sugata Bose
We must not buy the decadent culture of the West. If anything is anti-national as such, it is this servile observance of their modes and manners, this pursuit of Mammon, this subservience of the Spirit to the demands of the flesh.
Sensory delight has never been the ideal of our race. The fleeting pleasures of life have never been regarded as worth so much that the highest purpose of life, that of Self-realisation, be subordinated to it. Our national ideal has always been this discovery of the Atman, and the entire fabric of our culture has been built round it. Therefore, to lose ourselves to the snares of western sensory culture is to go against the very grain of all that we have stood for as a civilisation down millenia and this, by definition, ought to be deemed anti-national if at all such an epithet ought to be applied to any section of our citizenry for their professed ideological stand within the polity.
Human evolution goes on along a sinusoidal curve where a rising wave of spiritualism is accompanied by a falling wave of materialism, and vice-versa in alternate terms. Accordingly, when the Spirit gains ascendancy in human society, sensory culture retreats into a corner, biding by time till it gets space enough for expansion of its terrain. This does not mean that rising spirituality in society necessarily brings in material poverty. Quite the reverse. What it brings in is the decline in attachment to matter, to the delights of the infatuating senses that cover up the consciousness of God. On the contrary, rising materialism clouds spiritual vision and brings about increased material attachment and its concomitant inevitable degeneration of character which contaminates and corrupts humanity to the core till the reverse spiritual current again rescues man and raises him to a level of enlightened existence.
Such are the dialectical dilemmas that periodically oscillate human society, when it is forced to take a call about its future direction, when more often than not such a choice also evaporates and the resolution of historical forces and the call of spiritual evolution and material compulsion chalk out the career of society and send it coursing to its destination.
The meandering paths of Maya with their infinite complexities and gradation in sectional possibilities in a fluctuating field of multitudinous elements of different attained levels of evolution do not quite permit instant salvation for a large mass of humanity. Culture being diversely distributed among the populations of the world, it never quite is a homogeneous development for all as the reference frames for societal motion differ widely from location to location along the face of this earth. Thus, as a cultural impulse what may be true and uplifting for one nation may not be so for another at a specific point in time, for the demands of group evolution, as per levels attained already, differ widely.
This ought to be the understanding when we view Indian culture as well. Ours has historically been preeminently a spiritual civilisation and no amount of going against this massive national current will be of any avail. The Ganga, flowing down the mountain slopes for ages has come into the fertile plains to bear the harvest of a new springtime and to attempt sending the rolling waves back to the mountainous source is to engage in an exercise in futility, an enterprise in foolishness. This latter allusion is being borrowed from the vast storehouse of Vivekananda literature, albeit in an altered linguistic representation. But the meaning of it is clear. India, from time immemorial, has adopted the path of the Spirit and trodden along it, holding fast to the Vedas which form the bedrock of the national civilisation, and this she has done through the vicissitudes of times, tiding over unnumbered material onslaughts in the form of repeated alien invasions and consequent enforced subversion of culture. Yet, she has clung to renunciation as the basis of her civilisation and she must eternally do so to be true to her heritage. Add to that ideal of renunciation the ideal of service and you have got the entire Vivekananda package for our civilisation's invincible onward march. Swamiji had enunciated service and renunciation as the twin national ideals and had blessed the nation with life immortal if it sticks to this dual principle. And so must we and not be lured away to imitate the West without discrimination or purpose.
Written by Sugata Bose
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