blogzsunder.27

This brown earth of India and her blue skies are tempting; their lure is like the lure of the Dhatura flowers, at once exquisite and enslaving. Whoever shares the life of India ceases to be human and humane. He may become a god (a wonderful sight); he may more often turn into a devil (an interesting phenomenon); but the warm pulsating blood of man dries up in his veins.
An Indian is above or below man; he is rarely just man. To deal with him, we have to deal with a new species.
An Indian may be a god or devil, I have said, but he is definitely not a plain human being. Well, what makes him tick?
It is not my intention to juggle with words. I am going to call a spade a spade.
The Indian is said to be the most spiritual man on earth. This is worse than clotted nonsense. We have propagated the myth because we need something to boast about. Why should we not have a quality that the West is supposed not to possess? Our inferiority in many domains has compelled us to credit ourselves with wings.
The fact is, and I had better be started without beating about the bush, we are the most materialistic people in the world. Matter and spirit may or may not be indivisible (let thinkers dispute about this), but our Indian know that matter takes precedence over spirit.
An American lady, wishing to come over to India during the lean days of 1950, enquired of American officials as to what she should take with her to alleviate in some measure the miseries of the people. “Shall I take rice,” she asked, “or what, or canned foods, or medicines?”
The man in charge listened to her patiently, grinned, and said: “Lady, what Indian need most is CASH.”
CASH! That certainly is what Indian welcome most. I am afraid we are, have been, and will long remain worshippers of what D.H.Lawrence rudely called the Bitch-Goddess. For s she is a shining deity.
Best wishes,sunder thadani from Mumbai.

blogzsunder.26

subject: India without make up [in continuation from previous page].Whatever races came to India –they were attracted to her like moths to a flame –had one peculiarity: they refused to be integrated. Despite the terrific pressure of the anonymous multitudes around them, they remained undigested chunks.
Hence the Indian paradox: one Indian reacts, like a Scythian, another like a Sumerian, a third like a Greek, a fourth like an Arab, and so the complicated tale continues.
But let us not run away with the impression that our Indian Sumerian is a pure Sumerian. Only the dominant layer in him is that; his other layers are in constant conflict with the Sumerian.
Fantastic, it will be said. Not quite. Take, for example, the most noted Indian of his day- I mean Nehru. His fundamental reaction to life, and thought-patterns was Western, particularly British, yet he was no more an Englishman than I am the Kahn of Tartary. He was a complex personality, and affords the best example of my contention. Nehru could identify himself closely with almost every type of Indian; he felt with the Naga; with the Brahmin like a Brahmin; with the Muslim like a Muslim; with the untouchable like an untouchable; yet at heart he was none of these. What he was, I am sure, he himself did not know. He had deep urges and large dreams- that`s all. Here was our typically complex and contradictory Indian. India.
There is no doubt that our various racial strains have made us what we are at present-a people with no distinctive soul, but with only a many-coloured psyche. But to say this is not say all.
Our soil, climate and vegetation have played their part in moulding us. As there is a lot of nonsense talked on this subject, let me linger over a little.
Every country affects its dwellers in a particular way. A psychologist bas observed that a monkey sent to Germany for scientific observation begins to brood and behave like a Teuton, while the same money dispatched to the United States reacts like a restless American, always on the go.
A foreigner in England gradually and imperceptibly acquires British phlegm-that is, he becomes sedate,; the same person, if he had lived in France, would have turned light-hearted; and if he had been transplanted to the States he would get to be as agitated as a Yank.
Now whatever might happen to our mythical foreigner in different lands, the changes in him would be mostly in behavior. His core would remain what it was-Nordic or Stavonic, as the case might be.
The point I am trying to make is that whoever comes and lives in India undergoes a subtle change of psyche. His value alter. The boundaries of good and evil, so clear before, now begin to melt and move. He floats in a void.
Sunder Thadani – Your views, and comments are most welcome. Best wishes.

blogzsunder.25

Is there such a creature as an Indian? There may be, but I have not found it. An Indian pure and simple is rare as a griffin or an Assyrian bull.
How should it be otherwise? The Indian is not a person, but a patchwork. Indeed, he reminds me of Ibsen`s famous one layer, then another, then another, and finally, nothing.
I is the peeling of the various layers that causes much trouble. Each layer tells its own tale and, what is unbelievable, is not part of an organic whole. The result is that the so-called Indian is the most contradictory of persons. He is perpetually at war with himself.
Not knowing himself, he is unable to understand others. Our metaphysics, wonderful as they are, have tried to solve this confusion, but in vain. Our multilayered soul remains hidden and unfathomable.
But why are we what we are?
Aryanism, of which we have become particularly proud since independence, is, if we examine matters without partipris, integumentary. The essence lies elsewhere.
The Indian spirit is basically pre-Aryan. The Dravidian element in it is predominant, (as we see t0-day,) but the total influences go further back. We have heard the phrase “Mother India”; India is much more than that; she is the Granny of Nations. Her soul (there is, I repeat, no “it” about it) is steeped in the leadings and misleading of many civilizations.best wishes,Sunder Thadani.