Apparently Gandhi found Bhavgad Gita through Theosophists in London. Quite representative, then, that he should be adjudged Father of the Nation, for a nation that remains ignorant & lacking in self belief of its civilisational heft & finds it only when validated by white people.

Everything is “eww” until white people do it, whether it’s Yoga or Haldi doodh. Everything is coloured as backward until it is made hip by them. Why’s that? And what do you do when you discover this dynamic? Do you learn to shed the colonial conditioning or remain locked in it?

If it wasn’t for Theosophists, the world wouldn’t know about Karma/reincarnation. They took these concepts to the West and opened the doorway for more knowledge from India to make its way over there later. We would never have had the courage to speak up, for better or worse.

The point here is not that Indians today need to retrieve a golden age or a glorious past where everything was perfect. But that we need to be able to learn abt ourselves through ourselves. Because otherwise, we’re just ingesting diluted/misinterpreted versions of Indian thought.

Again, this is not a chauvinistic argument. The way we think is shaped in childhood & so, something we have no control over. The Abrahamic mode of thinking is fundamentally different than the Eastern/ Indic mode of thinking. There are certain gaps that cannot easily be bridged.

For instance, it would be a lot tougher for someone in US to reconcile with atheism than it would be for anyone in India. Where’s the scandal if there are multiple gods & goddesses to pray to? I mean, that effectively dilutes supremacy of One God, rendering apostasy pointless.