Western greats on INDIA
Bikash Sarmah
No matter how our self-styled
secularists vilify ancient Indian or Hindu wisdom, there is an element of
eternity and universality about that treasure trove. It is a great work of
reason and analysis. And there is no confusion in the discourse. Such is its
universality that the intelligent Westerner woke up to it long ago and
discovered the wealth therein. Such is its practicality that when Albert
Einstein deconstructed the long-held Newtonian world view in the early part of
the 20th century, and when quantum mechanics from the other side revolutionized
the whole course of physics and brought about a paradigm shift in our
perception of matter and energy, the founding fathers of the evolving field had
already taken resort in Hindu wisdom, and to their utter surprise found that
Hindu wisdom and the broader framework of Eastern philosophy talked in the same
language as modern physics was beginning to do. And it was not restricted to
physics or mathematics alone. Even Western writers and philosophers began to
appreciate Hindu wisdom, but not without struggling to comprehend the
non-Newtonian Hindu world view — used as they were to a discrete, Newtonian
notion of fundamentalism, both in the material and non-material world.
As
acclaimed physicist and thinker Fritjof Capra says in his classic The Tao of
Physics, ‘‘The picture of an interconnected cosmic web which emerges from
modern atomic physics has been used extensively in the East to convey the
mystical experience of nature. For the Hindus, Brahman is the unifying
thread in the cosmic web, the ultimate ground of all being... In Buddhism, the
image of the cosmic web plays an even greater role. The core of the Avatamsaka
Sutra, one of the main scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism, is the description
of the world as a perfect network of mutual relations where all things and
events interact with each other in an infinitely complicated way.’’
Such
world view brings a lot of discomfort to the typical Western mind brought up in
a culture that emphasizes only rigid fundamentals and overlooks the varied
possibilities beyond the confinement of fundamentals, unlike in the Hindu
system that rejects such fundamentalism and espouses a notion of the world,
both material and spiritual, that jells wonderfully with the implications of
the theories of modern physics. But how many know this? It is in this context
that a compilation of Western thoughts on India and its ancient wisdom, titled What is India? and compiled by Salil Gewali and published by Academic Publications, Shillong,
is pertinent. It captures the best of comments by Western intellectual giants
on Hindu wisdom and its timelessness, reflecting also on the parallels between
modern physics and Hindu wisdom. Let us hear some of them.
Werner
Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics and celebrated for his
epoch-making Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics that rejects the
Newtonian assertion of predicting the position and momentum of matter
simultaneously, glorifies Hindu wisdom thus: ‘‘After the conversations about
Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of quantum physics that had seemed so
crazy suddenly made much more sense.’’ If Einstein says that ‘‘we owe a lot to Indians who taught us how to
count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could be made’’,
Julius R Oppenheimer, the father of nuclear bomb, goes further: ‘‘What we shall find in modern physics is an
exemplification, an encouragement and a refinement of old Hindu wisdom.’’
Come
to TS Eliot, who needs no introduction. He says: ‘‘Indian philosophers’ subtleties make most of the great European
philosophers look like schoolboys.’’ What Eliot means, in other words, is
that when it comes to subtlety — that is, to the delicate refinement of ideas —
most of the great European philosophers should rather be huddled in a classroom
with an Indian philosopher teaching and guiding them. That is why Francois M
Voltaire, one of the greatest French writers and philosophers, admits thus: ‘‘I am convinced that everything has come
down to us from the banks of the Ganga — astronomy, astrology, spiritualism
etc. It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least
Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganga to learn geometry... But he would
certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the
Brahmins’ science not been long established in Europe.’’ And that is why
Ralph Waldo Emerson, great American author and essayist, confesses to having
been ‘‘haunted’’ by the Vedas. ‘‘In them (the Vedas),’’ Emerson
says, ‘‘I have found eternal
compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken peace.’’ And hence the candour,
again, of Arthur Schopenhauer, one of the greatest German philosophers and
writers: ‘‘In the whole world there is no
study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; and it will be
the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom.’’
Perhaps
the best eulogy for India, as it truly deserves, has come from Frederich von
Schlegel, acclaimed German writer, critic, philosopher, and one of the founders
of German Romanticism: ‘‘There is no
language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical
precision of Sanskrit, and this great India is not only at the origin of
everything, she is (also) superior in everything, intellectually, religiously
or politically, and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison.’’
The booklet, What is India? is doubtless a unique venture, and the publishers deserve
kudos for having accomplished such an onerous task as to compile comments on
India and Hindu wisdom by a galaxy of Western intellectual giants and then to
choose the best and the most relevant ones. The tragedy, however, remains: a
pseudo-secular dispensation as we are blessed with at the Centre would hardly
initiate any move to popularize ancient Indian wisdom, which is essentially
Hindu, and call upon the youth of the country to rediscover their past and
marvel at the sheer effulgence of Hindu wisdom — stemming not from any
dogmatic, fundamentalist and conditioned world view, but from a holistic way of
life and its liberating experience. This is so because the word ‘‘Hindu’’ will
invariably echo in any discourse on ancient Indian wisdom and the country’s perverse,
self-styled secularists will discover a ‘communal’ agenda there — ‘against our
pluralist ethos’. These poor souls do not realize — nor do they want to — that
whatever pluralist ethos the country today takes pride in and will sustain for
all times is due solely to the Hindu way of life, a preponderant way of life in
India. Why, look at how the other by-product of Partition, including
Bangladesh, has evolved.
Our
rich past must remain our greatest inspiration and inform our engagement with
the world. Even quantum mechanics and all of its later avatars recognize that
fact of life. Let us all be proud of it all.
(The writer is the Editor of ‘The Sentinel’, a Guwahati-based daily)