TO BLAME OR NOT TO

India has gone through a painful history over the last few hundred years, may be a thousand years. Some of the pain still remains strongly intact that we see its remnants in the frequent clashes between religions, between castes, between languages, between regions. Invasions are often blamed for this disharmony. Sure, they played a huge role, but were invasions the starting point?

There are multiple dimensions at play when it comes to culture. Of all the countries, the US has a bad history of slavery, it did not allow women to vote for several decades, women were not even allowed to participate in simple activities like marathons. While they are yet to have a women President, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have already got women Presidents and Prime ministers. But does that mean the rich ancient civilization of India was all hunky-dory? Probably not.

We talk about the destruction from our invaders. But is our history clean? Didn't our victorious Kings rape and loot the lost kingdoms? Didn't our Kings destroy and then install their own symbols in other Kingdoms? May be we were not so bad, but we were not noble either. Fast forward to today, in a state like Tamilnadu, when ADMK comes to power, it stops DMK schemes and when DMK comes to power, it stops ADMK schemes. It continues all the way to the BJP and Congress at the centre. From schemes to statues to narratives, we still keep fighting among ourselves. North vs South, Karnataka vs Tamilnadu, Chennai vs Madurai ... the fights go on. It's these fights that allowed our knowledge to be self destroyed, it's this internal enmity that allowed invaders to conquer us, it's this mutual hatred that has shaken our peace. Invasions at best catalysed our downfall, but by no means can we claim them to be the primary reason.

We have our own long history of other mistakes too have had a deep social impact. A discriminatory Caste System, Untouchability, Dowry, Sati, Zamindari Feudalism are just a few of them, some of them continue till today. We can claim to empower women, but less than 20% of Indian women work. Compare that with more than 35% in Bangladesh. No wonder they have surpassed India's per capita income. Not putting Bangladesh in a pedestal discounting their religious persecution of minorities, but this is not a discussion about who is worse, but about what we can do to make things better.

The ancestors of united India knew about planets, they named stars, they knew the distance between Sun and Earth much before modern day science found ways to measure, they calculated the eclipse dates that stand accurate till date. But when did we lose the ability to measure space? Ramayan has reference to a flying vehicle, Mahabharat has reference to weapons of mass destruction. May be they are true, may be they are not. But when did we lose this knowledge? Much before any of these modern-day invasions! Blaming invasions is just a possible refusal to own up our mistakes. We restricted knowledge to an extent that millennia later, we have lost most of it in spite of having a continuous civilization.

Some cultures thought their God was the greatest, some thought their race was the greatest. We thought that our civilization was the greatest. May be it is. But we lost it when we thought so. Even today, we want to proclaim that our civilization is the oldest. But no, there have been several civilizations, some even more advanced than ours that existed before the earliest references to our civilizations. Even today, there are multiple evidences that point to Tamil being the oldest language. But we do not want to acknowledge that, because Tamil doesn't suit our narrative. Sanskrit does, so we stick to it.

Anybody who thinks Hinduism is the greatest religion is probably not a true Hindu, for our religion talks about destruction of pride. We can keep blaming everyone, but the truth is we have failed ourselves. 9 out of the 10 most polluted cities are in India, more than 25% of our population is still below poverty line, more than 25% of our population is still not educated, our life expectancy is less than the global average, we are in the bottom half of human development index, healthcare index, happiness index. Sure, we have made progress to an extent that we talk about India becoming a super power, but those are just discussions during election campaigns that we conveniently forget later. Post elections, we restart the blame game.

We blame other communities for our population growth, we blame them for polygamy. But polygamy among Hindus is 5.8% while that of Muslims is 5.7% in India. In many states, the fertility rates of Muslims is less than the country's average rate among Hindus. For example, the fertility rate of Muslims in Kerala and Tamilnadu are 1.8 and 1.7 respectively, while that of Hindus in Bihar is 3.3. If course, the TFR of Muslims in Bihar is 4.1, but all this just means education, health and economic upliftment can collectively do more than religion can ever do.

No, not giving a clean chit to any community here. Whether it's about using every opportunity to talk ill about Hindu practices, whether it's about attempting to religiously convert the most susceptible, whether it's about putting religion above nation, the other communities have played their own part in the hatred story. But between Kashmir files and Gujarat files, between Ramnad files and Delhi files, we have come a full circle.

May be it's time to have a collective discussion around how to put ourselves into the positive spiral again. May be we should bring everyone onboard about the journey forward. May be we should together explore ways to regain our lost glory. The glory that contributed to around a quarter of the world's economy at one point, the glory that caught global attention that students from around the world flocked at Indian universities at one point, the glory that made us write books while most of the world was still living in forests. Whether we end up reaching there or not, just harping on our glory while holding a hatred for others will certainly not get us there. Unless we realize that we are in this together, we can happily prepare ourselves for our next invasion.