MY MOTHERLAND ... 34

MY MOTHERLAND ... 33

Evil within bounds is often more pernicious than unmitigated evil, direct and devilish, for the latter is visible and, hence, can be combated, but the former, silently toxic in its secret workings, persists within the system to destroy civilisation by its gradual degenerative manoeuvring. Such is the predicament we face today as commercial corruptions destroy the seeds of virility by implanting the weeds of desirous delight, delicacies that deform character and develop weaklings out of men.

But such are the times that responsible men and women are few and far between who will respond to the treachery of the times, this slow destruction of our culture in the name of culture itself. It is the age of the rising proletariat and falling culture. It is the age even prior to that. It is the age of the coarse capitalist with all his commercial contamination of lust and greed and the concomitant evils thereof.

The valorous age of the warrior kings is gone, perhaps never to return. The martial culture steeped in the Vedic values of renunciation and restraint, service and sacrifice for the common weal, when the nation came first and the self the last, are gone, perhaps never to return. Gone with it are the principles of purity which dictated the kshatriya valour in defending the motherland and the dharma. The movement of the times and the erosion of heroic values subsequent to the advent of the Industrial Age and its proliferating pernicious culture of profit at the expense of the soul, have caught up with India at last and are exposing the feebler facets of her children's personality that seeks expression in the toxic world of desires and delight. This is the scenario, what in common parlance is passed off as progressive urban westernisation but what truly is a phase of decadent evolution of humanity en route to the regaining of the paradise lost in the misdirected flow of life. The question, though, remains. What effect will this decadence of desires have, in the final analysis, on Indian culture and civilisation?

On the face of it it seems that the rural population, hundreds of millions of them, in the absence of education in the western system and modern decadent mores, will escape this culture contamination of the west and will save civilisation in India. The cultural continuity of the ages will flow undisturbed in the villages, 560,000 of them and carrying the bulk of the population. This vastness of India in terms of population and distribution in the villages, and this resistance to cultural corruption owing to the inherent strength of our local cultures forged over millenia and rooted in the Sanatan Dharma, has in the past saved our civilisation from permanent damage and, despite temporary reverses of the times and selective absorption of foreign elements into our all-embracing Vedic system, we have survived as a people adhering to our pristine principles enshrined in the eternal Vedas. In the villages, therefore, lie our hopes and the villages we must save from these capitalist corruptions streaming into our cities from the West.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : left -- Maharana Pratap Singh ; right [Sikh Gurus] -- top : Guru Har Krishan ; middle : Guru Arjan Dev ; bottom : Guru Har Gobind.