Jaan tells the multitude (I am really getting with this):
"'You await rescue, first from the grip of the tyrant, next and foremost from the grip of mortality - of being merely, emptily human. You await transcendence.'" (9, p. 150)
How would I reply to Jaan?
(i) Unlike its illustrious predecessors, the Terran Empire is not usually tyrannical - although Anderson shows us some exceptions.
(ii) Beware of any liberation movement that claims to combine the political with the transcendent. Any genuine national liberation movement must unite patriots of all faiths and none.
(iii) Everyone should relate his spirituality to his politics but we can do this differently.
(iv) We do not await rescue but work at our own liberation.
(v) I accept mortality and seek to transcend delusion.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Ah! Here we see Aycharaych's manipulation of his luckless dupe starting to take an overtly political and subversive form.
I've said this before, and despite its share of failures and lapses, the Terran Empire compares FAVORABLY to most actually existing gov'ts NOW.
I am glad you said "...genuine national liberation movement." Because I am not at all convinced that most so called "liberation movements" can honestly be so described. Blood drenched would be tyrants is what most such "movements" are.
My view is that the best way Christians can try to affect politics is not only by working to correct abuses, but also by advocating the LIMITED state.
Ad astra! Sean
Notably, the early Indian National Congress -- from the 1880's through about 1920 -- did not aim at "independence" sensu strictu; it wanted self-government within the British Empire, on the lines of Canada or Australia. "Dominion Status" as it was called at the time.
The Congress at that time was a movement of the educated, specifically those educated in English, and its main practical demand was easier access by educated Indians into the Indian Civil Service -- the exclusive "covenanted" bit, the 1000 or so British officials who governed India through what had always been a largely Indian bureaucracy.
(In theory the ICS was open to any British Subject; in practice, it mostly recruited young men from Britain, and the entry exams made it hard for Indians to get in, though some did.)
The Congress carefully avoided mass mobilization campaigns at this stage, because it was afraid of the localist and religiously based nature those would have to take, which would divide rather than unite India.
Plus most of the early Congress members (some British indiividuals were involved with founding Congress) were reforming modernizers and some were closet secularists, and they were afraid of the reactionary, anti-modernizing potential of the masses.
The archetypical Congress member at the time was the classic Bengali "babu", a member of the "bhadralok", which means the "respectable people".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Considering what a literally bloody botch "Independence" turned out to be, when a million or more Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other in 1947-48, and the decades of wars and economic and political stagnation which followed, I have to concluded that India remaining part of the British Empire with Dominion status would have been far better! That fraud and con man, Gandhi, has a LOT to answer for!
And that reactionary, anti-modern strain within Hinduism is still there, btw!
Ad astra! Sean
Gandhi was probably quite sincere,
He was also a man of relatively limited experience -- his contact with Europeans was nearly all, in any significant sense, with the British.
This led to some howling errors; telling the German Jews to use passive resistance, for example, or not realizing how malignant the Japanese were in that period.
He was a brilliant political thinker/tactician in a strictly Indian sense; he knew the weaknesses of the British (mainly that they weren't nearly as ruthless as their grandparents, who would just have shot him or strapped him over the muzzle of a field gun and pulled the lanyard), and he knew how to use Hindu religious symbolism to mobilize the masses without letting them get completely out of hand.
The violence of Partition was a shock and a surprise to him, as it was to most of the Congress leadership. They were Hindus, but not Hindu nationalists, and they underestimated the religious fervor of the Muslim population, and how deeply it detested the thought of being a minority in a country their ancestors had ruled (and oppressed, of course).
A lot of the Congress leaders were also highly Anglicized: the Nehru family spoke English at home as often as not, for example.
The man who assassinated Gandhi was a Hindu nationalist of the same movement that produced the current Indian Prime Minister.
Looking back on it, I think Partition was a disaster for Pakistan, and for East Pakistan/Bangladesh, but a great boon to India.
By 1945, though, independence was inevitable and the British simply wanted to leave before they had to spend more blood or money there.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I don't have much sympathy for "sincere" politicians. Because so much HARM has been done by sincere, well meaning types, assuming that can be said of Gandhi.
Yes, I recall reading of the fatuously idiotic advice Gandhi gave to the German Jews. He should have TRAVELED around the world, and become familiar with really nasty types, like Russian Communists, German Nazis, or Japanese extreme nationalists. That might have tempered his views of the British!
Compared to what a mess independence and partition was, some ruthlessness by the British in handling Gandhi might have been a good idea! And not necessarily by having him shot--exile to a remote island for life would have done the job.
So Gandhi and the other Congress party bosses underestimated the ferocity of both Muslims and Hindus? To me, that alone discredits them, showing how little they understood their own country. And, as you said, it was another Hindu who assassinated Gandhi!
I can see why Partition could benefit what became independent India. It reduced the size of the Muslim minority to a level where they could not hope to take over the country, with all the violence that would have meant!
Yes, by 1945 the British had lost the toughness needed for ruling an Empire, even if not losing that toughness would have been better for both them and places like India.
Ad astra! Sean
To be fair, nobody in Europe before 1939 suspected that the German national socialists planned to actually -kill- all the Jews, as opposed to persecution -- which, like pogroms, was nothing new. The Nazi leadership itself hadn't yet determined to do that, though I think it was at the back of Hitler's mind.
Sean: the British had conquered and ruled India mainly with Indian resources and personnel. It was probably impossible to hold it without that degree of consent, and that consent was withdrawn once a substantial proportion of Indians started thinking of India as a nation.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I've never yet had the gumption needed to wade thru Hitler's MEIN KAMPF, but I think the end conclusion of the hatred he had for the Jews in that book justifies your saying he had genocidal extermination in the back of his mind even that early.
You made a very valid point about India, once the British had lost that widespread assent to their rule there, the Raj could not last much longer. I do remember reading of a disillusioned Nehru lamenting in the 1950's how he and the Congress Party were governing India using the same methods as the British, but with less efficiency!
Ad astra and Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
I see politics as an arena of struggle so the spirituality that I see as relevant is the karma yoga taught by Krishna in the BHAGAVAD GITA.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course politics inevitably involves struggle and conflict, because people will strongly disagree on controversial points and issues. Successful polities managed to find ways of resolving disputes peacefully. Unsuccessful ones relapse into either dictatorship or collapse into civil wars.
Ad astra and Merry Christmas! Sean
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