Wanted: A New Idea of India

 I am aware that hundreds, if not thousands, of my betters - philosophers, public intellectuals and general blowhards - have said volumes on "The Idea of India". However, as an ordinary Indian, in this 75th year of our independence, I feel encouraged to add my two bit. 

Imagination and ideas are central to human society. Humanity has progressed from being bands of powerless apes in the animal world to unchallenged rulers of all that survey mainly because of its unique ability to co-operate flexibly as groups of thousands, millions and even hundreds of millions.

This ability of humans to launch and sustain world-changing projects stems from a core human functionality - the ability to imagine an entity - an idea - that is little to do with physical reality and nurture and strengthen it as an integral part of the collective consciousness.

In this realm of core ideas that drive human civilization are the notions of God, Religion, Nation and Money.

At the subsequent level, every nation is bound together by an idea. 

The US, for example, achieved greatness based on its self-image of rugged individualism and meritocracy framed in a federal democracy. An idea that attracted the best worldwide, priming a virtuous cycle.

However, over the last decade or two, this idea of the US has begun to fade, resulting in a decline from being the world's hyper-economic, military and cultural power. 

The US needs to reinvent itself, and at the core of this reinvention will be forming a new idea that redefines its self-image.

Thus the defining idea, while being the engine that drives its society and its place in the world, cannot be static - it has to evolve with time.

Currently, politics mire the debate on the idea of India. At one end of the spectrum is the idea of India forged in the Independence struggle, Gandhian ideals and the trauma of the partition. An idea of India as a unique society that values pacifism and eschews materialism and consumerism. A simple living and high thinking paradigm contrast the West's power-seeking "greed is good" paradigm.

The idea of India as an ancient civilization is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Once a superpower that went through a passing phase of subjugation. Now beginning the reemerge as a powerful and rightful leader of the world.

To my mind, both the above ideas are anachronistic in that both are rooted in the past. Because, to young India, in a world of rapid change, even the past decade, let alone the past century or past millenniums are irrelevant.

India as a society needs to evolve and nurture an idea of itself that can power its future. 

This idea needs to be rooted in its potential, not its past. 

At the same time, this idea needs to be rooted in reality and not just a rhetorical shift from extolling a glorious future instead of a glorious past.

Furthermore, this idea should position India uniquely and not just as a me-too in the polity of nations. 

A nation of 1.3 billion people - nearly 18% of the world population- cannot but have an idea of its future without evoking world leadership in some area of human endeavour. We cannot be a nation perennially looking to catch up with others, 

India is a young country with a median age of 28.43 in 2020. However, the media age is growing at an annual rate of 2.15%; thus, by 2040, the median age will be above 40. 

It is today's young who should define the new idea of India. Therefore, this new idea of India has to be aspirational - an aspiration of leading the world in a focused set of essential areas.

Given the structure of the modern world, this shortlist of essential areas must come from the domains of science & technology or public welfare (health, education and social justice).

To my mind, global leadership in a chosen set of critical science & technology fields can yield the resources that, if appropriately husbanded, can impact public welfare.

However, a Government committee or even a set of bigwigs will not choose this new idea for India.

The new idea of India will need to bubble up from the grassroots and percolate through Indian society before it takes hold. But, for that to happen, the nature of public discourse and debate must change.

Today's public discourse in India is both toxic and petty. The politicians bicker, and the media megaphones the bickering. 

I believe that a handful of charismatic and articulate young Indians aided by a set of powerful mass and digital media can seed a new idea that galvanizes India. But unfortunately, these seeders cannot come from the political class though they would readily find the media platforms. That well is too poisoned. Political voices today start from a heavy trust deficit and are guaranteed vocal opposition from the get-go.

Perhaps somebody needs to "seed" the seeders, a "Star Chamber" of well-resourced well-wishers who will carefully identify them and give them the media platforms. 

To sum up, a debate around the idea of India cannot assume that it is an idée fixe. 

An idea of India should be the roadmap to the future and not just a relic of the past. 

A bunch of public intellectuals (let alone politicians) cannot decide on the idea of India. Instead, it is a powerful, evolving emanation from the grassroots that animates the entire society.

Moreover, such an animating idea of India is not just a nice thing to have but instead a critical ingredient for a vibrant, on-the-move nation. And the only role for the elite and the powerful is to provide the ecosystem to empower such emergence and get out of the way.

Conscience and Consciousness

 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) 's definition of Conscience:

1) the part of your mind that tells you whether your actions are right or wrong 

• To have a clear/guilty Conscience (= to feel that you have done right/wrong)
• This is a matter of individual Conscience (= everyone must make their own judgment about it)
• He won't let it trouble his Conscience.

2) a guilty feeling about something you have done or failed to do

• She was seized by a sudden pang of Conscience.
• I have a terrible Conscience about it.

3) the fact of behaving in a way that you feel is right even though this may cause problems

• freedom of Conscience (= the freedom to do what you believe to be right)
• Emilia is the voice of Conscience in the play.

OED's definition of Consciousness

1) the state of being able to use your senses and mental powers to understand what is happening

• I can't remember anymore—I must have lost Consciousness.
• She did not regain Consciousness and died the next day.

2) the state of being aware of something

• Synonym awareness
• his Consciousness of the challenge facing him
• class-consciousness (= Consciousness of different classes in society)

3) the ideas and opinions of a person or group

• her newly developed political Consciousness
• issues affecting the popular Consciousness of the time

While OED does its lexigraphic job well, to my mind, the difference between the two words - Conscience and Consciousness - goes much deeper. 

Conscience is the result of the inventions of God, sin, heaven and hell.

Philosophers of the Kantian school elevated Conscience beyond the myth/s of God/s to the plane of ethics and evolution. Thus, in the realm of philosophy, Conscience is the touchstone that enables us, humans, to strive to be good and evolve.

On the other hand, Consciousness transcends the realm of concepts, an undeniable part of reality that today is at the frontiers of modern philosophy and science.

It is undeniable that a baby is born with Consciousness but does it have a conscience? Is Conscience a result of nurture leading thus to the conclusion that good and evil are relative concepts and not absolutes? 

The major religions of the book - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - strive to develop in their followers a conscience structured around a monotheistic God and concepts of good and evil, sin, heaven and hell.

In contrast, the so-called pagan religions - from the early Roman, Greek and Nordic civilizations -built around elaborate myths of a pantheon of Godly beings engaged in a larger-than-life never-ending play of Consciousness. As a result, Conscience and its commandments on good or evil, sin and the admission rules to heaven and hell were absent. 

As practised today by hundreds of millions, Hinduism also has a rich panoply of divine beings. The difference is that the pagan religions of the early Roman, Greek and Nordic civilizations have faded away, while Hinduism still stands as one of the world's major religions. It is so because Hinduism is probably unique in having two distinct but connected modes. Quite aside from the colourful pageantry of the three million or so Gods stands the magnificence of the Vedas. At their essence, in their Shruti stream, the Vedas elevate every individual Consciousness to Godhead: a canonical assertion that consists of revelation and unquestionable, unchanging truth. On the other hand, with its notion of good and evil and social mores, Conscience is presented in its Smriti stream as supplemental and changeable with the times. 

It seems to be an inversion of what the texts of other major religions do. 

The holy grail that many socio-political commentators pursue is to pin down the idea of modern India. Instead, I think they would do well to examine the duality that allows Indians to practice personal spirituality that hankers after eternal truths while living in a social and public space that teems with self-serving strife and endless chaos. 

India is a two-sided coin - its Consciousness on one side forever separate from the other - its Conscience. The difference is that in other great civilizations, the coin has melted, and the two sides have leached into one other.

A Letter from Mother Earth

Dear Humans,

Nature is both generous and cruel.

I should know. 

I have endured a fiery birth and aeons of barren solitude.

I have had fecund periods when my lands and seas have teemed with the joy of life. 

I have a deep attachment to the life I nurture, but I know that I will outlive all the species that are born to me.

Better-equipped ones will supplant some. Others will go extinct as catastrophe strikes. I had a particular attachment to the dinosaurs but could only watch mutely as the meteor hit.

I am deeply attached to you too. I love your ingenuity and your boundless imagination.

You have invented civilization, language, art, science and even God! Your possibilities are immense. You dream of being immortal as a race even as you steadily increase the span of each individual life.

However, going by experience, I would be sceptical of your species achieving immortality as long as I am your only home. Sooner or later, disaster will strike, and this home will no longer be yours. So your only shot at immortality is if you become a space-faring race and make multiple planets across the galaxy your home. And if you exist long enough here, you have the potential to do so.

I write to you to express dismay at what you have done over the past 150 years or so. I have had countless species come and go, but none have committed suicide. But to my dismay, you are pretty close to doing so. 

In polluting my air, soil and water at a reckless pace, you are not harming me but yourselves. I measure time in terms of epochs, and the change you have wrought on my body is but a passing sickness. But, on the other hand, you measure time in decades and centuries, and if you don't wake up soon, your time with me is measured.

You have realized the danger, but you are yet to wake up to it as a species. As a result, for all your intelligence, or perhaps because of it, you have a remarkable capacity to delude yourself.

Your scientists have built careers theorizing about climate change. Your engineers have come up with solutions in the realm of fantasy. Your politicians regularly hold talkfests.

But life goes on as usual. For all the talk about mitigation and adoption, little has changed. You act as if you are the only species to inhabit me.No thought for the countless others who do you no harm. No consideration even for your future generations. Your species still consumes like there is no tomorrow. And soon enough, if you continue to do so, there will be none.

You do not have the time to develop remarkable new technologies to ward off the impending disaster. You have no time to become a space-faring species.

You can do all that in the future if you act now with what you have in hand. Starting now, your lifestyles and the organization of your societies will need a paradigmatic change. The more developed a nation and culture, the greater the change and deeper the pain it will experience. That goes against the grain of the realpolitik of your civilization, but you have no choice.

I write to you because I love you and see the potential in you to be the enduring symbol of my fecundity and my ambassadors to the universe at large. If you will yourself to extinction, I will be very disappointed. However, my disappointment will fade as my world goes on, and you become only a distant memory. However, I would rather that I become a distant memory with your species than your species become a distant memory with me. You can do that. You need only to give yourself enough time.

Love

Mother Earth.