Tattva

I’m a cynical guy, especially when it comes to the news. The media is so corruptible, so biased, that it’s a hopeless wish to pray for balanced coverage of any foreign news story. And when it comes to India, forget about it. It’s as if the British made a deal with Reuters and the AP before liberating us so that we’d forever look like a third world country in the eyes of everyone else.

The typical image you see of India is not the one of the glistening modern metropolis such as Bangalore, or of the booming Bollywood industry, or even of some of the picturesque wonders out in the countryside. Instead, we’re treated to a National Geographic image of a cow obstructing the passage of cars, motorcycles, and carts on a trash-strewn highway, oftentimes accompanied by a dirty three-year old boy in rags, begging for money. Now do such images occur? Yes, I can’t deny them. Do they occur on a daily basis? Probably. India is such a vast expanse of land, filled with so many people, that you’d be hard-pressed to find a day where this scene did not happen in one city or another. But by making this the central theme of Indian photography and journalism abroad, they’re trying to send a message to those Indian youth who are part of the audience of these attacks.

And if it’s not the trivial stuff, then the media turns its trained biased eye on politics. When Israel can get a country by displacing Palestinian people, why can’t we replace the mosque in the ancient city of Ayodhya? Such sentiments are brushed aside. “Fanatics,” they call people with this notion. In the 2004 Parliamentary elections, we were getting ready to support as Prime Minister the Italian-born, Catholic, white woman, Sonia Gandhi, who happened to marry her way to her current position. In what other place would people opposing such a maneuver be viewed as radicals by the media? Even in the United States a naturalized citizen cannot run for President.

It’s not easy to shake off the chains of this incendiary journalism, but it’s something I strive to do. I always view stories about my motherland with a saffron state of mind.
What is saffron? Basically, it’s a lighter shade of orange. But it’s not just a color or pigment. Saffron is a symbol of the Indian people, and of Hinduism. In older days, the great kings of the subcontinent would hoist the radiating flag on their chariots as they rode into battle; a second sun beaming over the bloody battlefields. Saffron is the color of purity, like the burning fire which purges the evil from our minds and souls. It’s the light that guides our culture through the thousands of years of imperialism, so that we stand together, one billion strong, despite the attempts of the British, of the Mughals, of the Huns, and of Alexander “The Great,” to obliterate us.

From temple vandalism to empire building, from Partition to poverty, we’ve done something the Ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Mayans couldn’t do: stayed alive and remained important. We gave the world its current numeral system (ironically enough classified as “Arabic numerals” in history books) and continue to give the world important scientific concepts as pioneers in medicine and engineering (who hasn’t heard of the prestigious IITs?). And we have this beacon of hope, the real “banner that yet waves,” the illuminating rang of saffron as our emblem. It transcends across the physical plane and into the hearts and souls and minds of those who are willing to believe in our ideology.

I could say that saffron is my “mantra”, but I know what that word really means and where it really comes from. Merriam and Webster raped our words like the Caucasian fitness schools did our Yoga, extracting the spiritual essence—the core of the techniques—and crudely translating the postures into simple English, to dilute its potency. On TV, I can hear about economic “gurus,” listen to Apu, or find out how Louisiana’s Governor, Bobby Jindal—the first Indian-American to become governor—ended up hating us so much that he changed his first name and converted to Christianity, but still finds himself snubbed by John McCain at the hands of Sarah Palin.

Or I can see the news about the canonization of Sister Alphonsa Bharanangnam in the fall of 2008 by the Catholic Church, amidst the religious “turbulence” of the region. The Pope and his cronies have funneled money into numerous protests and articles condemning the Hindu people of the region for stirring up unnecessary hatred against “defenseless” and “poor” Christian missionaries and indigenous Indians. But this is merely a political charade, meant for pandering to the international community and that all-so benevolent media force, in a fairly successful attempt at forcing our corrupt government bureaucracy to crumple up like an empty paper bag under the pressure.

What the Catholic Church tries to hide is the vibrant Christian community that existed before the days of European imperialism. They like to flaunt the success of their missionaries, such as Mother Theresa, but none of this can offset the condescending attitude the Catholic man from abroad brings into India. They feed the poor, but desecrate our culture; they build schools but teach our people to view their way of life as inferior. They corrupt the minds of young rural Indian children with the vivid Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, blood and gore and all, while forgetting that in America, the Passion of the Christ was rated R and highly controversial.

In these tribal regions of India, Christian missionaries have been causing hostilities with the Hindu priests, hurling epithets in their direction, and threatening to kill them in some instances. Alas, their preemptive warning came to pass. Months before the canonization, they raided the ashram of eighty-year old priest Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, shooting dead the priest himself and four others, in front of hundreds of innocent children which the ashram shelters.

The response of the missionaries is simple and callous: defer blame to Marxist rebels in the region, despite the fact that they were ones plotting with these rebels and they were the ones who had attacked Swami Lakshmananda eight times in nearly forty years. And naturally, the government found itself mired in a bogus investigation, and the world refused to take notice until the next day, when the outraged villagers responded to the shooting death by burning a convent, which was vacated save for a couple of nuns, out of which only one died. And then, of course, the media became compelled to take action.

I was online that day, and happened to read an article from the Associated Press. In it was no mention of the murdered Priest; just a depiction of the “brutality” from the “Hindu fundamentalists.” And that is how they try to douse out our eternal saffron flame that radiates through these turbulent times. They try to make us flee from our heritage in disgrace; try to protect their cause by turning world opinion against us, to make us take a ‘secular’ approach at ruling our own damn country.

Is violence ever justified? Not really. Ahimsa (nonviolence) is a central tenet in Hinduism. But cowardice is weakness, and in an era when Islamic terrorists have bombed the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, and in cities like Jaipur and Bangalore recently (to say nothing of the attack on Mumbai), there comes a time when the flame rages fiercely, to the point where it cannot be contained until it asserts itself boldly, a brilliant spark of rage against the drab dismally gray scenery. And that’s the power of saffron.
Blasphemy.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” my Catholic school principal used to say to me at times when it clearly wasn’t warranted, like when I needed to retort the bully who tried to demean me on a constant basis. Of course, such dogma comes in handy when it’s time to cover up like a murderer who was caught red-handed. Which ‘wrong’ hurts more: the sexual abuse of a young boy or the subsequent murder of one of the defrocked priests in jail? The closing of a school due to debt from multimillion dollar lawsuits or the activism against the closure? The murder of an eighty-year old Hindu priest and his wife or the subsequent riots? Well, which one could have been avoided had one of those not occurred first?
There comes a time when we must remember our roots and follow their blazing path towards justice. There comes the time when a central potent light guides us all. A spark was ignited, and it has now grown into a ball of flame capable of cleansing us of our weakness, bringing us back onto a track of peace and prosperity.

It’s the saffron state of mind, and it glows brighter than ever before.

Sanchay Jain is in twelfth grade at Boston Latin School. You can contact him at   jetblackskj@yahoo.com.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 12:05 am and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.