Dharampal - BCMK25 #1: Indian Idea of Time...

A brief introduction to this series is located here. 

I am assuming the readers here are people who are aware of the work of Dharampal and have read this work. However, there may be some who may not have, hence the links will be helpful.  The book itself can be downloaded from the Centre for Policy Website here. The foreward written by Dr. Jitendra Bajaj on the work is available here.

Day #1

I am planning to have the BCMK25 as a series of questions that I decide to pose based on the work. It is not as much as my questions as that of Dharampalji’s. I think this work is one among his works where he is very critical of a lot of the elites of India and in very strong terms. 

Dharampalji talks in this book on the Indian concept of time, the cyclical nature of it and the way the Indians have understood time through centuries. He also states how this is not been used by us in understanding the ways of the world. 

How many of us Indian have managed to examine the current century, the 21st century (or the 20th century) from the perspective of the Indian idea of time (the Indian idea can be kali yuga or any other calendar)?

So, what does this mean? our people talk of time in the context of large slices of things. A Buddhist monk ones introduced himself by saying, "I have been around for 800 years"! of course that is because of the reincarnation theory that the Buddhist prescribe to as much as most other ordinary Indians. most of our people state in moments of despair, "this is kali yuga, things will definitely degenerate" or "it is because we are in kali, things are like this". But, do we interrogate the 20th or the 21st century from the view of the kali yuga? or for that  matter from any of the time slices of the traditional kind that we may think of? is kali yuga the prerogative of the fatalists? do others have a claim over interpreting the modern times through the prism of the kali yuga or other forms of Indian calendars? for that matter do we even know the  various types of vernacular calendars that people from different regions of India use? we have the division of calendars based on the seasons and each season has several other divisions, our traditional festivals often start with the chanting of verses that point out the ways of measuring the time in some communities.  The same fatalist who blames for a mis-fortune on "kali" would also state that "this person must have done some good deed in the previous birth" if he feels that someone has been born into a happy or wealthy family. It is a common theme to state that "we have been connected through ages and births" among thick friends.

But such an allusion to time (or birth) would be mocked at currently as being irrational and unscientific though majority of our people seem to believe on this. Among the prevalent practice are the moon cycle followers, then there are others who think of time in terms of ascend of certain stars. Someone recently mentioned that there are 3 different ways of just interpreting time from watching the sky among ordinary Indians. There are farmers who measure the life as cycles of seasons of various crops and these are always spoken of in cyclical terms rather than linear ones.

What do we do if we were to examine the 20^th and 21^st century using the cyclical idea of time? Is it optimistic or blind faith today to sate, “we have been through this before, we must have got out of it, so, we can get out of it again”? Today there is an increasing awareness on the destruction of the world as our ancestors inherited it. The linearity of time and the finite resources all of which need to be enjoyed pushed a set of people to exploit them mercilessly and create knowledge, technology, philosophy and economy to suit such an exploitation. When we shift the time to be cyclical, we can re-think the knowledge, technology, philosophy and economy a lot differently from what we have evolved. We will still inherit the world and we may as well leave it in a better shape than before. At some level, we realize that life recycles us and we are our ancestors and we are also our own successors. We cannot escape what we create or what we created, hence, it doesn’t make sense to mindlessly exploit. It is not for the future generations that we need to leave a better world, but, we need to make a better world for ourselves, we are responsible for ourselves first and our own life force to begin with.

An online course on the works of late Sri. Dharampal will come up here.