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From an email in Jun 2023 - to new friendships! Something I wrote in response to a workshop advert on decolonization.
I published this in Apr 2024 and on rereading it, have since realized that it was impulsive, opinionated and itself divisive or incendiary. While my reading of fiction gave me a good understanding of the maladies that wreaked havoc on this world, its only my history teacher who has opened my eyes and let me put faces to the atrocities committed in the clashes of culture and peoples we have had in the last 3000 years.
I hope earnestly that a new age will dawn when humankind puts it's energies to express love instead of defiling and desecrating the human or divine spirit.
Dear Over-zealous Anyone,
As long time pacifist and a lover of the principle of love as taught in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I would like to make a few observations.
If it's true that India has to be great for humanity's sake as Sri Aurobindo so rightly puts it in his Independence Day Speech of 1947, then I must say frankly the very word decolonisation puts me off.
Greatness lies not in who we reject, but what past we can forgive and move on from.
If it's indeed true that, as Vrekhem so beautifully put it in his video on Theodicy that nature makes no mistakes... Then who are we to judge a few entire countries and their living progeny for the atrocities committed during the "colonial" era.
I would rather use Sri Aurobindo's words integrate and synthesise. Are we ready to integrate ideas with the western civilization as I foresaw 10 years ago when I wrote Dear Brother?
Until when will the oriental and occidental be kept apart in the eyes of God? Isn't it time for the Mother to waken us with her effulgence as new movements spring up that will truly lovingly change the status quo like that article Dear Brother so ardently begs.
I also vividly remember Mirra Alfassa's plea for ashramites not to judge one another or be over critical of themselves or their past actions.
To me, this anti western talk is all very divisive. Don't we all belong to this larger ashram of God where all of our collective karmas are being worked out.
I never could understand National Pride just as George Carlin never could understand Irish Pride.
I do not know how many time I have read that unforgettable speech of Sri Aurobindo's of 1947 and I know distinctively that he said we "could take the leading role".
Please do not for one minute forget that India's spiritual gift to the world was only the second of his five fold dream.
He then said more about the re recognition of oriental wisdom worldwide, and lastly a "step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness".
So when he refers to Asia, he meant Buddhist Asia, Islamized Asia, Christianized Asia, not to mention Judaic, Sikh and Jain Asia. Even Atheist Asia.
Asia's gift is in how we integrate, not infight.
Are we not forgetting that last dream when we loudly proclaim Jai Hind (Victory to India) instead of "Jagat Kula Ki Prem" (All Love to the World Family)?
Realise the boundlessness of space... See yonder African child laughing in the sunlight, and that American old man bent yet smiling. Do you realise that it is God passing?
I hope you recognise me paraphrasing Sri Aurobindo's translation of the Isha Upanishad, page 130.
I never really identified myself as an Indian just as to Walt Whitman, America was an ideal.
Yes, I strongly believe in #OldIndicWisdom and that it can cure many maladies of the world, but aren't we a little trapped and limited when we use the very "colonial" word India?
Imran Ali Namazi
Author and Ideator,
YieldMore.org
After writing that, I was chastized by my new made friend who said:
The difference, I personally feel, is only one of semantics not a polarised point of view. The word 'decolonise' has been carefully chosen and rejection, a key component of Integral Yoga, is something that India must do to truly realise herself. Her conditioning must also be addressed. Only then can India truly embrace and, yes, lead the world.
However, perspectives vary and we accept that.