The Iconoclastic Nation

The Nation celebrated the Republic day. We saw the tricolor everywhere. But what is it that we are celebrating? We are celebrating the day of the nation’s formal formation – a day when all the states of the country formally integrated to form the union – a day when we got our constitution. We changed from a free state to a formal nation – India, The Republic of India, The Union of India.

But still, something holds me back from being convinced about the concept of India. Lot of thoughts come into me, was it an accident that lead to India? Or was it always like that. When I think of India 1500 years back, I find it a lot similar to what Europe was before the industrial age – many small kingdoms confronting each other for territorial gains. They are now independent countries existing in a state of perceived stability. And we are a nation (or seven) – and in turmoil.

Today, we are free, we are no more slaves. People say, India was a golden bird in ancient times; really?  I guess it was.

But, what is India? Is it a collection of kingdoms that fought the common tyrant? Or is it the territory governed by the predecessors of the tyrant? Or is it a land mass whose occupants have a common culture? Probably, it’s a combination of all these. So what defines India? And what makes us proud of it?

Today, the generally accepted notion among Indians is that “we are proud of our glorious cultural past”. But, how glorious were we, and what is left of it to still be proud of being its caretakers, and how much of it is worth preserving?

The days of looking down on Hinduism – the lowly idolatrous Dark Age Hindus – has gone. The west now looks at India as a land where philosophy and spiritualism flourished – thanks to philosophers like Vivekananda and Aurobindo who got the west acquainted with it. But, how philosophical and spiritual are Indians really? Mostly, we mistake devotionalism with spiritualism. While the western philosophy galloped from Socrates to Descartes, we plunged from the Vedanta to the Puranas – from rational philosophy to irrational mythology – from logic to devotion – from free thinking to fragmented and confronting cults – from equality to tyrannical casteism. Revolutions like Buddhism were Brahminized – their icons inducted as avataars of Hindu gods. What can defeat a rational atheist, trying to reform society, more than making him God of the very evil he’s fighting?

But, what was it that triggered a downfall of the intellect in the region now known as India, unlike in Europe, where the mind moved from Dark Age to the golden era of rational thinking? What was it that gave Puranas more limelight than the Upanishads? Was it the oppressive foreign invasions of India that led to it? Did the defeats make them complacent and surrender the fate on to the mythological gods of the fictional Puranas?

Today, we are free. We are secular; of course, secular never means rational, it’s just the opposite of it – everyone is free to follow any irrational things they want, without hurting anyone else who is doing any different irrational thing, and their interests are safe guarded from anyone rational by blasphemy laws. Still, we are free, but what is left of that golden age? We blame the invaders for demolitions they did, iconoclasm that happened, the degradation of the morals, the inequality and the misery. But who do we blame for the degradation of the minds to Dark Age?