How Secularism Promotes Mediocrity in India
French Philosopher Braudel Contrasts Attitudes of Indian and Chinese Business Leaders & Politicians. Latter Engaged In Rebuilding Their Civilization, The Former Ignorant of It
As part of my work with ‘Sarayu Foundation Trust’, i keep meeting some of the smartest minds around the world, working on issues and rebuilding of the Indian Civilization.
Dr. JK Bajaj is one such individual. He was recently appointed as the Chairman of Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Dr. Bajaj is a renowned physicist evolved as an established social scientist having worked extensively in areas like: Scientific and Technological Tradition of India; Indian Society, Economy and Polity; Indian ideas and institutions; Religious Demography, Natural Resources and Geography, etc. He was awarded the Padam Shree in 2022.
Widespread mediocrity in India
During once such meeting, Dr. Bajaj brought up a point that he finds teachers are not really interested in teaching. This got me started. I vented my observation of the widespread mediocrity i have been seeing across India in the software services sector. Infact, i wrote about this issue in this post on LinkedIn way back in 2015. This is when he said…
Secularism and the problem of Indian mediocrity
“My biggest problem with ‘secularism’ is that it does not allow us to teach our people about the greatness of the civilization we had, and therefore does not allow for giving its current people a purpose of rebuilding it. With no such sense of grand purpose, India has been reduced to mediocrity” ~ Dr. JK Bajaj earlier
He then went on to share what French Philosopher Ferdinand Braudel had to say while comparing China’s growth in 1970s with India’s laggard attitude.
Ferdinand’s comparison of China and India
He paraphrases what Braudel says…. “Chinese can put up statements of belief in their factories stating:”
“We will do 10 years of work in 1 to rebuild the China of yore”.
Ferdinand, Dr. Bajaj further shared, says, “The elite of China have a clear sense of purpose of rebuilding their civilization, and compared to them, India does not have any such purpose”.
Excellence and Valmiki Ramayana
He then spoke about “Daaj” — a word in Gujarati which sort of means ‘fire in the belly’.
He shared that Valmiki Ramayan starts with the excellence in Ayodhya. “If there is any Elephant that can be bred with excellence anywhere, then it must be here in Ayodhya”.
He said that all these ideas of excellence are completely missing from our narratives. The reason he repeated is this imported notion of secularism which keeps the Indian state away from talking about the glory of the Hindu civilization that excelled in every area from astronomy to literature, from mathematics to architecture, from medicine to the arts.
In his usual style, he laughed while sharing these painful thoughts. The pain was visible on his face.
My heart was bleeding with anger and the desperateness of more that i need to do.
