Making India a Great Nation – Part 2 Did the Bible Make India a - TopicsExpress

Making India a Great Nation – Part 2 Did the Bible Make India a Nation? VISHAL MANGALWADI Why don’t Hindus hurt cows? Because they consider cows “sacred”. Why do most Indian politicians and civil servants rob their nation and individuals? Why do most businessmen cheat their nation by evading taxes? Because we don’t believe that “nation” is sacred. The nation, several generations of Indians have been taught, is merely an accident of mindless, meaningless history. Then why did the Tilak–Gandhi generation become the first, ready to lay down their lives for their nation (not for their throne like the Rani of Jhansi in 1857)? Because the Bible taught them that nation was sacred. It was purposeful, divine invention: “From one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26). Until 1919, English was the language used in every session of the Indian National Congress – the embodiment of Indian nationalism. From 1920, under pressure from Mahatma Gandhi – a Gujarati – the Congress began the uncomfortable exercise of using Hindi (not Sanskrit). But the Hindi educated Indians used was not that of Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas. It was the Hindi of the Bible translators, promoted via mission schools. The English language that created Congress’s intellectual culture was also created by Bible translators such as Tyndale and brought to us our modern, alien, (Jewish-Protestant) idea of the nation. Doubt it? Of course, colonialism was bad . . . But no worse than preceding Muslim and Hindu rules. Why didn’t any of the earlier regimes ever produce even the concept of an all-India National Congress? Empire versus Nation Didn’t India have great empires? An empire is the opposite of a nation: In an empire you are a subject: In a nation you are a citizen with rights and duties, privileges and responsibilities, opportunities and support. An empire taxes you without consulting you. The emperor uses your money as it pleases him. A great nation, on the other hand, is built on a biblical principle, “no taxation without representation”. The principle is derived from the Rehoboam–Jeroboam conflict in 1 Kings 12 (Bible). It was articulated during the American Revolution (1775–1783) and was implied a century earlier in the British civil war (1642–1651). In an empire, you exist for the state: in a nation, the state exists to serve you . . . because Jesus said that although he was Lord; he had come not to be served but to serve and to give his life to save others. Because nation is a moral concept, nationalism is a moral virtue. According to Genesis 11 and 10, it was God who demolished human effort to build an all-encompassing empire in Babel. In order to minimize the effects of human sinfulness, God divided us into ethnic, linguistic and geographic nations. What God has created is sacred. That is why it was not the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Manusmriti, Gita, or Ramayana, but a Brahmin follower of Christ, Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1834–1873), whose poetry, inspired by Milton and the book of Psalms in the Bible began cultivating Bengali nationalism. But wasn’t Indian nationalism fuelled when Mahatma Gandhi launched the civil disobedience movement against the law banning Indians from making salt? Yes, it was. But who gave to Gandhi’s generation the idea that a nation’s laws ought to be just: in the interest of the ruled, not the rulers? Okay! But wasn’t 19th-century nationalism born as a reaction against British racism? Specifically, because they tried to prevent SN Banerjee (1848-1925) from becoming an officer of the Indian Civil Services; lowered the age of recruitment into ICS to favour English young men; and made a racist law barring Indian judges from trying Europeans? Indeed, such racist acts infuriated educated, upper-class Indians. But Indian culture had been racist (casteist) ever since the Aryans subjugated the subcontinent’s native people. The Hindu law was completely discriminatory. Racist discrimination of lower caste Hindus and tribals did not trouble our conscience until the Bible that taught Banerjee’s generation (including through Macaulay’s penal code) that a nation is a moral community where everyone, including an alien, is equal before the law (Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1: 16, etc.). Why were Indians, educated in Christian colleges and British universities, enraged at racist discrimination in the civil services and legal system? Because the Bible’s worldview inspired and shaped the Educational Despatch of 1854 and create universities specifically to enable Indian students to acquire the merit and qualification to govern their own nation. Also, because the British Parliament had affirmed in 1833 and 1853 the biblical principle that (unlike Indian culture that allotted jobs according to caste) India Civil Services must recruit on the basis of merit - not race, nepotism or bribery. Lower caste social reformer and educationist, Mahatma Phule (1827-1890) knew how hazardous it was to mobilize public opinion against caste-based racism (except where the British were administering a Bible-based law). In contrast, the British press hero-worshipped Indians who galvanized nationalist sentiment against British racism. The bottom line – our culture never gave to “the nation” the right to assemble and express our feelings and opinions through demonstrations and free press. Did pre British empires fail to birth nationalism because they could not unite the nation through transportation (railways), communication (telegraph), administration (ICS), and just law (IPC)? No, The European Union has much better transportation, communication, administration, legal systems, common market, and a common currency. Yet, it is struggling to survive because, for over six decades, Europe’s secular elite have deliberately undermined nation and nationalism. In the Soviet Union, Communism crushed the idea of nation and the Union fell apart in four decades. In pre-British India, our problem was that we did not even have the language of nation and nationalism. Our religion precluded the very possibility of building a nation. A Religion Divides or Unites a Nation A major factor was the Ashwamedha Yajna – the Horse Sacrifice. Some priests would pump up the ego of the king of a little area. He would then let loose an army of a few hundred young men behind a horse. The horse would go ten miles east and twenty miles north. The king’s militia would assert their lord’s sovereignty and start extracting taxes from people living in those villages. Neighbouring kings would fume at their loss of revenue, until their successors performed their own yajnas to recapture their fathers’ territory, and if possible, a little more. Thus, our most prestigious and expensive religious ritual divided geographic India into such petty kingdoms that it became hard to sustain even a good empire such as Ashoka’s or the brutal empire of Aurangzeb. The concept of uniting little kingdoms into a free and strong nation to resist foreign invasions never gained ground. While religion divided India, it was religion that united kingdoms in England, provinces in Holland, and colonies in the USA into great nations. Take for example, the USA: Many native tribes had lived in North America, apparently for thousands of years. Why didn’t they at least attempt to become a nation? That would have made it so much easier to regulate European settlers through some sort of visa system. They didn’t because the “nation” is an idea that came to North America with the Bible. England was governing 13 distinct colonies in North America, 5,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. It was a Christian Bible preacher, George Whitfield (1714–1770), who became the “first American” – a public figure, known, loved, and respected in all the colonies. America’s successful Revolutionary War began five years after his death. Why didn’t it end with 13 separate kingdoms? Because, the preaching of men like Whitfield had triggered a Great Spiritual Awakening. It inspired Americans to revere and study the Bible, which gave them its peculiar idea of nation – just as it gave that concept to England, Holland and India. In fact, it was an American president, Franklin Roosevelt, not Mahatma Gandhi, who prevailed upon Winston Churchill, Britain’s prime minister, to give up his Roman–Anglican idea of empire, in favour of the biblical idea of turning colonies into free “nations”. It was their 1941 agreement, known as The Atlantic Charter, which set the stage for Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 Quit India Movement. [To be continued] This 2nd article in my new series "Making India A Great Nation" is to be published by FORWARD Press in June 2013. You can subscribe to the magazine by emailing aspire.prakashan@gmail