“India is not to follow the west” – Sri Aurobindo (1)

1. ▪︎ “India is not to follow the west” – Sri Aurobindo
2. ▪︎ Sri Aurobindo and Capitalism
3. ▪︎ Crisis of Capitalism, Socialism and Sri Aurobindo

1. Who is Sri Aurobindo? More emphatically, who is this Sri Aurobindo The answer is: Without knowing Sri Aurobindo, India is illiterate. An illetrate person has to first learn a, b, c and then learn to read and write to become literate – a nation has to first learn the rudimentaries of precious knowledge and then learn to gain a mastery over that to make use of that knowledge. Knowledge is power – more powerful than atom bomb.
2. To become aware as a person, you may Google Sri Airobindo; read the opinions or reviews of those who have read him; read the views about him of those who are regarded great minds of our world.
3. To be aware of him as a nation, India needs to make Sri Aurobindo a compulsory part of its education. Without Sri Aurobindo, India is illetrate. Of course, as it is said, ignorance is bliss; and this India – the India of marching paces towards industrialization, promising start-ups, “Atm-nirbhar Bharat”, capital investment and technological innovation and growth; corporatizing agriculture and farmers agitation; rising GDP; gaining voice and respect in international community, all – is living in this proverbial bliss! Without Sri Aurobindo, India is ignorant.
4. Many well-known Indian voices say, “Sri Aurobindo was a Maha-yogi” (a great Yogi among Yogis). This is nothing but to side-track him; to ignore him; to belittle him. It is evading the issue – the things he said about India.
5. Sri Aurobindo said, “India is not to follow the west”. What does it mean? What is that, which the west is doing and India is not to do – India should not do?
6. What West is doing is this: Its entire edifice – its machine of industrial growth, its values, its entire civilization – is founded on profit, that is, desire to earn more and more money or wealth. All its educational institutions, industries, research projects, national plans and international objectives are founded on a single principle of earning profit or wealth. They know nothing beyond this principle.
7. In Sri Aurobindo’s terminology, desire to earn more and more profit – or wealth – is called a “Vital Force”. Vital force is a force that derives human life and its activities but it is a force of lower level in the treasury of forces that humans knowingly or unknowingly possess. There are more forces in the arsenal of humans, which can equally derive human life and activities and are of a higher level than of Vital forces.
8. Today all those Indians who run the machine of development in India – industries and ventures – are driven by this Vital force of earning more and more profit or wealth and all those foreigners who come to India to invest and set up their industries and ventures, likewise, come for this greed or desire to earn more profit. And, as human desire for more money – or greed – knows no limits, these people in pursuit of earning more money roam all over the earth to create their monopolies, cartels, empires and, cause wars and make ordinary people’s life miserable. This all they do in the name of development!
9. Is it possible to substitute this Vital force  (desire to earn more profit or wealth) with any better force, which could derive human life and its activities? It is impossible! To an ordinary human mind it is impossible.
10. Sri Aurobindo said, “India is to do the impossible, because others do not know that it is possible. India is not to do here what others have already achieved”.
11. How can it be done in India? We quote Sri Aurobindo from “The Human Cycle” the following paragraph to get our guidance. He says, “Reason using the intelligent will for the ordering the inner and the outer life is undoubtely the highest developed faculty of man at his present point of evolution; … He seeks for an intelligent rule of which he himself shall be the governer and master, or at least a partially free administrator”. (Page 102).
12. Sri Aurobindo on the ideal of human society says in “Ideal of Human Unity” thus on pages 494-498 (and he leaves a choice for humanity whether this ideal would be achieved through the instrumentality of State – and finally the world state – created by the natural circumtances or through a conscious spiritual will as has been working in Asia):
13. “In almost all current ideas of the first step rowards international organisation, it is taken for granted that the nations will continue to enjoy their separate existence and liberties and leave only to international action the prevention of war, the regulation of dangerous disputes, … It is impossible that the developmemt should stop there; … Science, thought and religion, the three great forces which in modern times tend increasingly to override national distinctions and point the race towards unity of life and spirit, would become more impatient of national barriers, hostilities and divisions and their powerful influence to the change.
14. “The great struggle between Capital and Labor might become rapidly world-wide, arrive at such an international organisation as would precipitate the inevitable step or even present the actual crisis which would bring about the transformation. … Already there are at work not only ideas but forces, all the more powerful for being forces of the future and not established powers of the present, which may succeed in subordinating nationalism to themselves far earlier than we can at present conceive. … If the principle of World-state is carried to its logical and to its extreme consequences, the result will be a process analogous ….
15. “The spirit of the centralisation will be a strong unitarian idea and the principle of uniformity enforced for the greatest practical convenience and the result a rationalised mechanism of human life and activities throughout the world with justice, universal well-being, economy of effort and scientific efficiency as its principle objects. …. The commercial interests of humanity at large would be given the first place; the independent proclivities and commercial ambitions or jealousies of this or that nation would be compelled to subordinate themselves to the human good.
16. “The ideal of mutual exploitation would be replaced by the ideal of a fit and proper share in the united economic life of the race….
17. “This then  is the extreme possible form of a World State, the form dreamed of by the socialistic, scientific, humanitarian thinkers who represent the modern mind at its highest point of self-consciousness and are therefore able to detect the trend of its tendencies, though to the half-rationalised mind of the ordinary man whose view does not go beyond the day and its immediate morrow, their speculations may seem to be chimerical and utopian. In reality they are nothing of the kind; in their essence, not necessarily in their form, they are, as we have seen, not only the logical outcome, but the inevitable practical last end of the incipient urge towards human unity, if it is pursued by a principle of mechanical unification, — that is to say, by the principle of the State. It is for this reason that we have found it necessary to show the operative principles and necessities which have underlain the growth of the unified and finally socialistic nation-State, in order to see how the same movement in international unification must lead to the same results by an analogous necessity of development.
18. “The State principle leads necessarily to uniformity, regulation, mechanisation; its inevitable end is socialism. There is nothing fortuitous, no room for chance in political and social development, and the emergence of socialism was no accident or a thing that might or might not have been, but the inevitable result contained in the very seed of the State idea. ….. The races of Asia, even the most organised, have always been peoples rather than nations in the modern sense. …….. Which then of these two major possibilities would be preferable?
19. “To answer that question we have to ask ourselves, what would be the account of gain and loss for the life of the human race which would result from the creation of a unified World-State. …… This result can only be avoided if an opposite force interposes and puts in its veto, as happened in Asia where the State idea, although strongly affirmed within its limits, could never go in its realisation beyond a certain point, because the fundamental principle of the national life was opposed to its full intolerant development. ….
20. “The World-State must now either be brought about by a mutual understanding or by the force of circumstances and a series of new and disastrous shocks…….
21. “A new order is demanded by the new conditions and, so long as it is not created, there will be a transitional era of continued trouble or recurrent disorders, inevitable crises through which Nature will effect in her own violent way the working out of the necessity which she has evolved.
22. “There may be in the process a maximum of loss and suffering through the clash of national and imperial egoisms or else a minimum, if reason and goodwill prevail. To that reason two alternative possibilities and therefore two ideals present themselves, a World-State founded upon the principle of centralisation and uniformity, a mechanical and formal unity, or a world-union founded upon the principle of liberty and variation in a free and intelligent unity. These two ideals and possibilities we have successively to consider…”
23. We would say here that it must be done in India willingly rather than through the instrumentality of a brute Socialistic State coming into existence by the force of circumstances – civil unrest and violence. Sri Aurobindo has emphatically said that the socialistic ideals (sharing for common good of humanity in place of mutual economic exploitation) are inevitable to take place on earth and that it is better that the same may be achieved willingly through an Asian way of inner spiritual conscious decision rather than imposed on humanity by force by a socialist World-State. We give an illustration how it can be done in India.
24. There is a Maruti-Suzuki industry in India – a Indo-Japan joint venture plant in Gurugram manufecturing automobiles. There both the Indian and Japanese partners have set up this industry to make cars so that profit could  be made out of the venture – the primary motive to set up the industry is to earn profit or wealth and making of cars is only a means for that. The only motive that derives them is to earn profit or wealth and making cars is undesirable but necessary evil part of the whole trouble, which if possible should be done away with. But no way! If they do not get profit, they will not make cars and run away – to set up any other profitable business.
25. This is a work driven by Vital force. How could it be substituted with a better force – motive to work?
26. The Maruti-Suzuki plant is a semi-automatic one – there are robots working for the part of the car making process. There is canveyer belt that keeps moving a piece of car from a point to another point and at each point a human being puts in place (assembles) a specific part to that moving piece of car, and that human being has to complete his job within a specified period of time so that the entire work on the conveyer belt remains synchronized. This semi-automation process has maximized the number of cars made within a month or year. Good! But this has also enabled the owners of this plant to terminate many workers without effecting their car making capacity.
27. Suppose, the owners of Maruti-Suzuki plant do not terminate the excess number of workers – or allowed by law to so terminate, what would be the result?
28. All the workers will work for lesser time and with the same pay – they will have spare times, be more healthy and happy. All the world would like to work in that plant. A less work and more enjoyment! A seed for better civilization! A country that has this type of working civilization would make all the best brains of the world to go and settle there. What does it mean to that country? Those best brains would make every day new scientific discoveries and invent new technologies! In one word: That country would be the most powerful in the world.
29. Do you know why USA today is the most powerful country in the world? It is so because it makes the best brains avaiable on earth flock to that country. It attracts those brains there by paying the highest amount of pay and perks – and in lieu of that pakage of money extracts maximum work (output, in modern parlance) from them.
30. These best brains are happy with that money but not satisfied with that work civilization – where they find new opportunities to prosper but in an environment where they have to make others more prosperous out of their work. In all, they find on balancing what they have lost (peace of mind and happiness in life) is more in value than what they have found (money and wealth). After all, humans are humans and they have feelings and sense of comparison. They would prefer this newer civilization where work is less, enjoyment more and still the same amount of pay; they would be more happy and satisfied there. But ….. but … turning to our supposed example of Maruti-Suzuki, how would it work in reality?
31. Wait! The owners of Maruti-Suzuki would earn less profit, because they would need to pay more workers. They would close down the plant and run away! No employment even for a single worker!
32. But wait! Who have invented artificial intelligence and developed robots? Not the owners of Maruti-Suzuki, though they use those robots in their plant. These robots are invented by another lot of workers somewhere else, who are likewise paid and terminated by their employer when their work become redundent for the employer. Their own inventions kill them!
33. They have the brains that made these discoveries and inventions, and they find themselves work under the somewhat similar circumstances – that is, being paid for their work and terminated from their jobs when their own discoveries and inventions make their work redundent.
34. They remain dissatisfied and would like very much to flock to that supposed dreamland where there is less work and more enjoyment!
35. But the question – the mother of all questions – is how to make owners of Maruti-Suzuki in our illustrative example agree to remain “contented with less profit (wealth)” and allow more workers to do less work with the the same pay being paid to them!
36. The answer to this question is: Make Sri Aurobindo a compulsory and universal part of education in India – an education that teaches that there are better objective to achieve in life than earning wealth. It can be done! Sri Aurobindo can be made a part of education. Such a move, teaching Sri Aurobindo, would on its own strength spread through out the world, like a wave. It would create better human beings – human beings motivated in their life and activities not by Vital force of desire to earn more wealth but by the better force of Divine urge.
37. It would be laying down the foundation of a new civilization in India, which is different from the west. Such education would create new values in the human minds. It will propel people here to put in place different considerstions to move their life snd activities. It is the meaning in the social context of “India not following the west”. All civilizations are founded on education. It is a long process. Every process has a starting point. Impossible things are not done in a day – they take time and they have a starting point.
38. Do you know in 628 AD – during Harshvardhan’s time when Huen Tsing visited India – people did not put lock on the door of their houses in India? How could it be made possible by India in those times? It was by education! There was no thief in India. How was it made possible? By education – the education of Buddha’s teachings. Education makes a human what a human is and that human makes his civilization.
39. Sri Aurobindo very pithily said, “India is not here to do what others have achieved. She has to do impossible, because others do not know that it is possible to do”.