A lesson from India

USHA EKANAYAKE

“People get hooked on India, my daughter’s friends told me. I agreed because it was not only the tourist sights that grabbed my mind but the multitude of people with their differing views and lifestyles and interests.

India was like a painters palette where there were new squeezes of paint on the old paints that being mixed into a vast array of colours one could not imagine or, sort out the shades.

When they spoke of Nehru and Gandhi my mind went immediately to Akbar who was the first to really unify Hindu and Moslem. I said, “It is Akbar who created an empire where Moslem and Hindu lived amicably.

He also inspired Hindu warriors, especially the Rajputs and aroused in them again their reckless concept of chivalry and honour to maintain the Indian empire of a Moghul ruler,” - Pandit Nehru. India is a strong nation today because every Indian has a sense of pride that they did not submit to foreign conquerors.

The young Indians rarely think of Akbar, but they are loyal to the concept of one country, which they say came about because of the desire to be free of the British Raj and their colonial rule. “They only had contempt for all Asians they loathed the Indians.”

“What makes us different to the Sri Lankans is that we do not think everything Western is better than our own.” I did not argue with this because they had met many Sri Lankans who had said Mata Sinhala danne naa.

Laughing all the while my husband Abey, and I explained that there were some superficial, mainly town dwellers who had become anglicised and thought that they were ‘superior, not quite native,’ and to prove this they insisted that they did not know Sinhala or Tamil. The Indian girls laughed adding that if they lived in a country and did not know the language of the people ‘They must be pretty dumb’.

The Indian students’ knowledge of the history of their country was deeper than our knowledge of Sri Lankan history probably because we learnt of our island from books written by people who thought like the English.

It is only after free education and C. W. W. Kannangara that a proper history of Sri Lanka was read by a child. But today, for a short period history was not taught in our schools.

This has deprived our children of a sense of national pride. Our politicians should ask for advice on matters relating to children and education, instead of being ‘know alls’ and importing ‘edu ideas’ and introducing things that they see in other countries. The NCGE was one such misadventure, for which the students and the schools paid.

In India politicians do not meddle with education as they do over here, because similar meddling and experimentation would not be accepted by the Indian population.

Going out with the Indian students was an uplifting experience. Tagore had said, “To know my country one has to travel to that age when she realised her soul and transcended physical boundaries.”

The girls simply said, “It means that India is what it is because of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam and Sikkhism.” They are proud of Tagore, Gandhi and their tradition of ‘spiritualism’ that the Beatles, particularly John Lennon, came to India in their search for the meaning of life.

According to them the beginning of modern Indian nationalism began with the uprising against the East India Company. While the Marathas, Rajputs, Scindias and the Moghuls squabbled or fought against each other in Eastern India.

Robert Clive promoted treason and forgery and won the battle of Plassey and acquired authority over Bihar and Bengal in 1757. “As a result of their rule the terrible famine of 1770 ravaged over a third of the population of these two states (Discovery of India). The British East India Company, in its pursuit of profits had forced the Indian peasant to cultivate opium instead of subsistence crops. The peasants who resisted were slaughtered. In Eastern India this mindless act of greed was never forgotten.

Pandit Nehru quotes from the rise and fulfillment of British rule in India by Sir Edward Thompson and G. T. Garret.

“A gold lust unequalled since the hysteria that took hold of the Spaniards of Cortz’ and Pizzaro’s age filled the English mind. Bengal in particular was not to know peace again until she was bled white.”

The opium was exported to China. It was a cash crop expected to bring the company enormous profits. It led to a rebellion and the ‘Opium War’ and a resolve in China to get rid of the British.

It was at this juncture that the British State took over the rule of India and decades later that the Indian freedom movement grew. We went to a number of Indian book stalls looking for books on environmental pollution and simple methods to solve the matter. It was in one of these book stalls that I found a leaflet by an Indian who had written that it was a great Indian who was one of the world’s first environment protectionists.

Siddhartha Gautama had advised monks to use the saffron robe to cover and protect the body then it should be used as a sheet over a mattress or bed, and finally folded and used as a mat to wipe their feet on.

Today we all accept recycling as one way of preventing pollution. It was Sidharta Gautama, Mahatma Gandhi, Anagarika Dharmapala and many other spiritual leaders from India and Sri Lanka who by practising simple living showed us a way out of polluting our land but we did not heed their lesson. Do we even now want to live a simple life?

My mind also goes back to a lady I met, who had just returned from USA. She was so very sorry that she could not buy the exact colours she actually wanted when she purchased silk bed linen.

“I had to buy pale blues and pinks and apple green.” She added later, “Anyway I put them into the bin after a year or two.” I suppose we Lankans should be happy that we are far from the wasteful, luxury seeking, opulent and rich indulgent capitalist civilizations which do not give recycling a thought.

But the TV has brought all this to us and in many ways it is not only our environment but our mind too that is being polluted. I also suppose the Maharajahs of old and the present day tycoons of India and probably our adigars and muhandirams were like the present day rich set.

It is human nature that the ‘human herd’ follows the rich and the powerful in lifestyles while millions live simple lifestyles voluntarily. The future of our future generations rests with our return to simplicity and recycling. The world needs individuals like Che Guevara, and may be John Lennon. The young people the world over accept them as people who cared and were willing to lead the young.

My great discovery was Vandana Shiva and her writings. Abey had read her work but I had not. She is today a highly respected environmentalist as well as a thinker who wants India and other Asian countries to return to their ‘roots’ in lifestyle and agriculture and uplift the conditions of the peasants who still live in ‘want’.

Vandana’s recommendations are somewhat revolutionary she says that India should take a cue from Indian drug companies which began by making HIV drugs for the people of India and many countries in Asia and Latin America benefit from this great step.

The stranglehold of the international drug cartels on the ‘drug market’ has been broken. International companies were and are immoral in their pursuit of profits and have no compassion for the poor who cannot afford certain drugs but they were essential for HIV patients and today millions of poor patients in India and other Asian countries are able to buy drugs that only the rich could buy.

Vandana says that agriculture must be free. That rich companies like Monsanto have no moral grounds on which to claim exclusive rights to the cultivation of genetically modified crops and making financial gains from modifying food crops such as corn, soya, grain etc. She says, in a recent article ‘The Madoff of agriculture is Monsanto’.

The world should not permit Monsanto to control agriculture, particularly GM food products and no companies should be permitted to control the growth and price of food crops.

To her, food is a basic human right and to manipulate and control food is a violation of these rights. She also says that food subsidies are immoral particularly the manner in which they are used in the first world, to the advantage of their farmers.

Vandana’s view is that the encouragement of cultivation of food crops by small land owners is best. The cultivation of crops for export prevents the development of ‘food crop agriculture’.

Another factor stressed by Vandana is a two pronged approach. In India there is the Grameen Bank which gives loans at low interest rates and are set up for the purpose of giving a helping hand to the peasant who could also be illiterate.

Grameen banks are life saving institutions that would also bring dignity and well-being to the rural cultivator. She says there should be no speculation on agriculture. In this world there are sufficient activities for man to speculate on. Food, water and air should be left without man’s greedy tampering.