Understanding contemporary India through Mahabharat’s moral dilemmas, Spiritual Meditations, NewAgeIslam.com

Spiritual Meditations

Understanding contemporary India through Mahabharat’s moral dilemmas

Welcome to Hastinapur- The Mahabharata's timeless appeal

On the subtle art of dharma

Gurcharan Das

Prosperity has indeed begun to spread across India. Happiness, alas, has not. What blacken our days are the insistent reminders of governance failure, hanging over us like Delhi’s smog. I am not only thinking of corruption in its usual sense — of a politician who is caught taking a bribe. My anguish comes from something else—from a recent national survey that found that one out of four teachers in a government primary school is absent and one out of four is not teaching. Another study found that two out of five doctors do not show up at state primary health centres and that 69 per cent of the medicines are stolen. A cycle rickshaw driver in Kanpur routinely pays a sixth of his daily earnings in bribes to the police. A farmer in an Indian village cannot hope to get a clear title to his land without the humiliation of bribing a revenue official. One out of five members of the Indian parliament elected in 2004 had criminal charges against him; one in eighteen had been accused of murder or rape.

http://newageislam.com/understanding-contemporary-india-through-mahabharat%E2%80%99s-moral-dilemmas/spiritual-meditations/d/1774

Mind set: Dilemma of a liberal Hindu, Spiritual Meditations, NewAgeIslam.com

Spiritual Meditations

Mind set: Dilemma of a liberal Hindu

By Gurcharan Das

Sept 6, 2009

With the rise in religious fundamentalism around the world, it is increasingly difficult to talk about one’s deepest beliefs. Liberal Hindus are reluctant to admit to being Hindu for fear they will be linked to the RSS. Liberal Christians and liberal Muslims abroad have had the same experience. Part of the reason that the sensible idea of secularism is having so much difficulty finding a home in India is that the most vocal and intellectual advocates of secularism were once Marxists. Not only do they not believe in God, they actually hate God. As rationalists they can only see the dark side of religion — intolerance, murderous wars and nationalism and cannot empathize with the everyday life of the common Indian for whom religion gives meaning to every moment. Secularists speak a language alien to the vast majority, so they are only able to condemn communal violence but not to stop it, as Mahatma Gandhi could, in East Bengal in 1947.

Part of the problem stems from ignorance. Our children do not grow up reading our ancient classics, certainly not with a critical mind as youth in the West read their works of literature and philosophy in school and college. In India, some get to know about epics from their grandmothers; others read the stories in Amar Chitra Katha comics or watch them in television serials.

http://newageislam.com/mind-set--dilemma-of-a-liberal-hindu/spiritual-meditations/d/1792