a very indian failure

one of the more important books i’ve read in the past couple of months is julian baggini’s “how the world thinks” ¹. i had picked up this book way back in 2022, on what was (i think) my fist visit to the foyle’s at charing cross road. i don’t read a lot of nonfiction, but i do harbour a soft spot for philosophy/ethics/critical analysis, and the book’s tagline (“a global history of philosophy”) had tempted the eyes of yours truly: a curious and somewhat depressed recent immigrant. as one does, i promptly forgot about this book afterwards, and only came across it recently while cleaning my bookshelf. 9

“ah, well. fuck it. might as well,” i thought.

i have finished this book now. it’s very readable - more at the existentialist café than the burnout society, although that’s to be expected with survey books². it presents during the first few pages an obvious-in-retrospect idea that the philosophy of a culture is the underlying “software”³ that can help understand how that culture has evolved to be where it is in the present moment. it goes over the following extremely broad “quarters” of global philosophy:

1. east asian philosophy (china/japan etc.): ideas about harmony, virtue, being one w/ nature, aesthetics, etc.
2. indian philosophy: vedanta/charvaka, death/rebirth, karmic cycle, nirvana etc.
3. muslim philosphy: falsafa vs qalam, the dominance of theology and quran, etc.
4. western philosophy: rationality, utilitarianism, individualism, etc.

i grew up under the influence of (2)⁴, which i believe makes me an authority figure in this area. i have things to say and vitriol to spread.

i think the author of the book was very fair to all of the schools, and i do appreciate a lot of very positive takes on charvakan thought, which imo is extremely underrated. go read about them! but i’m only positive on sundays, and it’s a wednesday at the time of my writing this. i love that the author spent time throughout the book indirectly implying how india’s dominant philosophical doctrine has failed its people, dropping bangers such as:

there are certainly more godforsaken places, but has anywhere been so forsaken by so many gods?

and it kinda makes sense, doesn’t it? if you’re an indian reading this, haven’t you had some version of this exact thought while driving past mounds of garbage littered on national highways? while trying to simply breathe in the country’s capital? or while trying to follow basic traffic rules, and being told that that’s “not the way”? the author himself notes while traveling across bodh gaya in bihar that:

i’ve been to places at least as poor in east africa, but none were as dirty.

which took me back to when i was 19, maybe 20, to this little trip to haridwar i was on with my family at the time. i’d always had issues with this place: while i appreciated the scenic beauty of some of the sites around, i could never bring myself to walk through the absolute dirt and grime littered on the streets around har ki pauri, which one often had to navigate bare-footed. i used to complain to my parents about this: “why is everything so dirty? can we go to a gurudwara instead?” barely ever was i given a satisfactory reply. what made me angrier was that this was not only accepted, but celebrated. often i was told that this is close to the hermetic/sadhu life, that dirt and grime humbles you. chanting the name of some god i no longer remember, i was in the middle of taking dips in the holy river when i saw an actual piece of shit float past me. humbled, i came out, rubbed myself dry, and swore to my parents that i’m never coming back to haridwar again. i’ve kept my word on that since.

i was extremely religious as a kid⁵, but experiences like the one above had slowly gnawed at my psyche. as an adult now, especially as an adult who’s moved around a bit and travels often b/w london (where i work) and delhi, it’s difficult to not pay attention and draw comparisons.

i’ve been thinking about this obsession most of us (indians) have with the karmic cycle, particularly with rebirth/reincarnation (or a complete exit). i mean, i understand that most organised religion is prescriptive⁶; the particular prescription i’m somewhat mad about is using your current life as a means to an end: to make the next life “better”, whatever that even means. i mean, there might exist some instruction in some footnote of a veda around trying to be a decent human being in the present: being helpful not because it will guarantee you a better next life/ticket to heaven, but because it’s the right thing to do. from what i have seen though, such instructions are pretty much nonexistent in practice. when i look back and ponder about the actions and intentions of my elders, whom i was taught to adulate and never question, i notice nothing but the same self centred doctrine at play. just fulfil your duties: pray to some of the million and a half gods, bring money and offerings to the same institutions that have upheld casteism and other social evils for centuries, get your kids married in time⁷, make sure they have grandkids in time. never ask if they want any of these things: be a man of dharma. there’s a laundry list of such action items, and best believe very few of them have to do with becoming an actually considerate and attentive human being… attentive to the wishes of your kin, to your community; attentive towards the environment, towards the future generations.

another thing that pisses me off is the lack of accountability. oh, did something not work out? did you fail in some personal aspect of your life that was very fixable if you had owned it up and tried to correct your actions? you know, learn from your mistakes? no. let’s never do that. mistake? what mistake? let’s discuss rahu-ketu instead. actually, no. let’s go to this jyotish right around the corner. he has the answers. he knows why you haven’t been able to get a job, or why you aren’t getting married. even if your life is miserable, and you’re making it miserable for everyone around you, please never stop and reflect on the idea that maybe this way of life isn’t for me. instead, go ahead and force it on everyone, ad infinitum. once the masses concede, they’ll see the point.

unfortunately, ceding their own individual thought and aspirations to serve theological doctrines will have your masses live in constant pain, frustration, and anger… anger that they will take out on their spouses and siblings and their rivers and their land. and you will walk around and see mounds of garbage and misery in plain sight signalling to you an absolute systemic failure, and all you’ll still worry about is the evening prayer.

and then you die and maybe you do go to heaven, but was it worth it, rakesh?

footnotes