The book I cited is available for less than $20 here :
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwo ... sed/Dharma. To entice you further into buying the book, I throw in quotes from the paper by Dad K Prithipaul. Moderators if this infringes any copyrights, please remove the post.
Some of the below points, or variations of them, have been articulated by BRF members in different threads.
To me, the whole thing boils down to what we have tried to define several times here at BRF - ie. India. What is that we stand for (values)? What is that we want (strategy) ? How are we going to achieve it (tactics)? The above three questions are my way of breaking down the complex topic.
He talks about the French revolution, the American freedom ithyadi and what the people in those countries consider important or continue to nurse. For example freedom, equality, fraternity, reformed jurisprudence, scholastic curriculum, American dream etc.
*****************************
1. India is the only example of a major civilization country, which, in its capital does not have a single monument which recalls its past prior to the fifteenth century. India is the only major country where the political leadership sinks into a sort of paralysis, driven by a morbid funk, when the social need arises to refer to her classical philosophers, her architects, her artists, her exemplars, her monuments, her heritage.
2. Either by consent or by constraint, India accommodates herself to Western demands and pressures. For instance, all international flights entering or leaving India are regulated according to Western timetables. Scientific and business standards are prescribed by the Western institutions. Higher education has to meet criteria set by the Western universities
{Swamyg: recall Bade's lament in the nuke dhaaga about 'international scientists' comment}
3. While the classical literature describes Narada as a learned scholar, endowed with a perfect knowledge of the Vedas and the Upanishad, of the Dharmasastras, of the six darsnas, of grammar, of astrology, of music an dsong, he is nevertheless personified as an ever grinning young man with a mute vina hanging from his neck and all his knowledge is condensed into the insane repetition of "Narayana, Narayana". He is supposed to provide comic relief, he is the convenient vidusaka...
4........{on India}....to give herself a legal system which bears faint organic continuity with her own past history.
5.Nehru always flaunted what he believed to be a progressive outlook by making fun of brahmanas and ridicuing their attachment to orthodoxy and tradition. He wanted India to have no affinity with her past.
6. For in addition to its juridical sophistication the Indian Constitution ought to have had a Preamble which approved the elimination of inequality among nations, promoted the equality among the citizens of a single nation, and above all, unambiguously declared the need to remove all obstacles to the free striving for, and the practice of, the perfectibility of the individual man.
6. In short, the Preamble ought to have, in new, virile terms, adapted to the socio-political realities obtaining at the end of the century, proclaimed whatever was optimistic and just in the former dharma pronouncements and in harmony with an understanding of a comprehensive history of the World. That would have been a unique gift to the Indian nation and to the World.
7. In classical India the raja (king) never placed himself above dharma. Any violation of dharma on his part would be immediately known by the common citizens (praja). Dharma encompassed the sensitivities of the ruler and of the ruled. It was a multilayered social structure that made allowance for the needs for hierarchies and differences, and provided direction to the life of individuals and of communities.
8. The Hindu ideology advocated by the BJP or the VHP does not exhaust the totality of the dharma. When the crowd becomes a nuisance, one must climb to the mountain top.
9. Throughout the course of her history India has always been revitalized by the accomplishments of thinkers, cultural pioneers moving northward from the south.
10. ..., India still continues to define herself in terms and ways approved by the outsiders.
11. Despite its genuine merits the 1950 Constitution appears like a puny achievement when viewed against, and evaluated by, a consideration of the characteristic achievements that gave to India her unique greatness:..........{he lists architectural marvels, texts, epics and institutions}
12. That dharma became associated with obscurantism and backwardness was unfortunately due to the fact that, by 1950, the voices of Culture had been already stilled.
13. The alienation of India from her native tradition is the product of an endogenous will and of the style of her administration.
14. Sometimes Indian elites have difficulty in understanding that their use of English language does not serve as a bridge between them and the West. On the contrary, it seems to extend the psychological distance between the Indian and the Westerner.
15. One wonders why India is the only country which has a ministry of Information and Broadcasting. In the French government, for example, two of the most prestigious ministries are those of Culture and Education.
16.WIth philosophers, proponents of culture, sociologists, histories, intellectuals exerting at best minimal influence on the debates at the Constituent Assembly, the 1950 Constitution represents the vision of men trained in British jurisprudence. It is this narrow intellectual mould that lies at the base of the collective neurosis in India:..
17. These moral principles are the precondition of the effectiveness and relevance of the Law. The Indian Constitution is no exception. But what are the moral principles which it takes for granted as its historical antecedent? Was the popularity of the Leaders in 1950 the only absolute norm which gave sanction to its approval?
18. Dharma is universal; the 1950 Constitution is a specific contingent reality. Dharma is eternal; the Constitution is material, born at a particular moment; it has a beginning, it is consequently imperfect and will in time perish. India made a choice between the eternal and the transient, between the absolute and relative.
19. Dharma is antithetical to kleptocracy.
20. THe national bank of Indonesia is called Kubera bank; Indonesia's national airlines bears the name Garuda. The folklore of Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia is largely coloured by Indian themes borrowed from the classical epics. The Theravada Buddhism of Sri Lanka, Burma and the other South-East Asian countries ought to act as a bridge of friendship and understanding to link with India. Why is it then that this alienation from India does not seem to preoccupy the framers of the foreign policy of the country? What is lacking in the language of Indian diplomacy.
***********
ramana and brihaspati: You have to buy this book.
)))))
