I came across Mr.Swaminathan Gurumurthy‘ s TedexTalk Video watched so far 40,000 times at YouTube. Once, I was done watching this 17 minutes extraordinary video, I knew I need to review the video to ensure, many other Indians likes me watch it, such an excellent video from my all-time favorite Mr.Swaminathan Gurumurthy.
I truly wonder, why such an excellent video with must know information has been watched by only 40k viewers , while, Kolaveri D at stupid song video has been watched by whopping 18 Millions people so far?. Hence, I wanted to review the video to ensure, many watches this video and educates and enlightens them. As I am sure, not all the Indians are with the Kolaveri, only to watch Kolaveri D and miss intellectuals’ messages such as this one.
“India’s rich culture, civilization is denied by the modern generation of India” Says Mr.Swaminathan Gurumurthy at a lecture in SRM University. In this video Mr. Gurumurthy talks about the Traditional values of India as mentioned by the previous speaker, Mr. Rahul. He talks about the notion, ideas, civilization, culture, religion and unity of India. Modern Indians are all oblivious about what India is, India was or what India is going to be and about the lost civilization values of India. It was an idea that was forgotten by the world though it was the only civilization that comprehended the world and laid down the agenda as to how the diversity of the world can co-exist and still can find unity at various levels whether at religious level, philosophical level, economic level and India had been a path finder to the world. When Angus Madison who wrote the economic history of the world in the year 2001 said for 1500 years from first century AD to the 15th century India was the leading economic power house of the world with its GDP grossing 33 to 35% throughout the world and in the 16th century India lost out to china and again regained it in the 17th century, that means for 1700 years India was No. 1 nation in the world virtually except for 1 century and It shook the world.
India never dominated the world
Mr.Gurumurthy continues about the fact that many people did not believe Angus Madison, that our country could lead so consistently and so powerfully and yet not Dominate the world. This is one civilization which never sent out a soldier to conquer anybody and rule. This was not said by “Swami Vivekananda” but by none other than the Chinese ambassador of America in the year 1400. Our nation ruled china mentally, religiously, psychologically for 2000 years, so the capacity of India to influence the world without force, without the use of power, whether it is politics, economics or culture has been the demonstrate power for example when Buddhism went to china it is not that some evangelist went from here and turn china into a Buddhist country, china sent its people, its scholars Juan Zhang. They came to India to learn about Buddhism and they took Buddhism to china. India never sent any evangelist to spread religion to any country. That is the beauty of India. We understand that there is something fundamentally different from other countries because as lord Krishna says you don’t go and preach religion if somebody is interested in a religion he should come and learn. So you only create interest in people for knowledge and the kind of knowledge they need, they will come and seek.
The seeker of knowledge, who is entitled to gain knowledge and you don’t impose knowledge on them. If anything that has got enormous distress in the world it is the concept that my god is superior to your god. This was said by none other than John pier layman who is an IMD Professor; He was the advisor to WTO. He said that the biggest distress that has taken over the world which is more today than ever was the monotheistic religions which believed that their God is superior to all other gods and that has become the cause of all clash between the religions in the past and civilizations today and it is only a religion that develops the capacity of the people to worship many gods. If you see anybody in India, they go to different religious places, like Hindus they go to dargah and velankani it makes no difference to them because this is a culture which has real respect for all gods, but religions with single god stating that their god is superior and other gods are inferior, our holy book is great and yours isn’t , That ego clash has exterminated all the civilizations apart.
What can we learn from Religion?
Pier layman says, in this era of globalization global trade, global economy, global interactions have to survive if they have to make an impact on this world for the overall development of the world. You need a social fabric, you need religious ideas and you need a plutonic platform. On which you can make people work together, think to digest difference, the capacity to overcome the effect of differences, The capacity to make people feel that there is a higher unity that is operating beyond all that one seas and feels that is the way that our philosophers our great saints and rushis have shown. You know one Christian scholar came to the “shrungeri shankaracharya Chandrasekhar indra bharathi”. This conversation took place 60 years ago. He wanted to become a Hindu and you can see that there is a book printed of the dialogues between them. That man wanted to become a Hindu but he say’s don’t become a Hindu you be a good Christian, your religion has enormous amount of capacity to lift you to the level of attaining god seeing god, feeling god, why should you become a Hindu? .This is the approach of this nation: you be truthful to your religion, you read your book very well, you understand your people well. It is not that my book is superior unless you read my book you become a Christian or a Muslim. This is what that has destroyed the world.
If today there is a talk about civilization clashes, if there is a talk about the world getting into more and more terror, it is because of two reasons : People feeling-
- My religion is superior.
- My god is superior.
And you have to accept it. If you don’t accept it then we have a battle.
“Swami Vivekananda” said in those days instead of fighting whether your god is superior or my god is superior, let us have a boxing match to decide who is superior, that has become an issue of war and an issue of terror and there is another god called modernity. The modernity says Ia m right, everybody else is wrong, you must dress like me, you must think like me, you must read like me and you must speak English like me and if you don’t do that you are inferior we have that way demonstrated that there are two classes of people, the people who understand modernity and are coat and suit people and others who are not modern are anti modern and who are out of tune with time and they have to be exterminated, you know the number of native Americans who got exterminated by divorce means was estimated at one point as 140 million and that has now virtually crossed 200 million. People when exterminated only on the basis that you are not fit to leave in this modern world. Hence the Modern world and monotheism share the same characters and that is why it is a cause of the problem.
Conclusion
Now talking about education systems we forgot all the ages of education of Vedas and we have brought in a system which says that you have to become anti Indian and then only you can handle the world and we began distancing our self from our own culture, our own traditions and we have been discarding it is irrelevant and which will not aid our own development these are the reasons why we are alienated from our own soul, our own fore fathers.
Hence we have to go back to our own selves knowing the riches and greatness of India and we have to be proud of our own heritages which were exploited by other barbaric countries that invaded us and changed us from who we where. It is everybody’s responsibility to teach how great our culture used to be.
Dear readers, please leave Kolaveri-D and watch this video now…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Ke4ToJrKA?rel=0&w=853&h=480]
