Macrohistoric Case for India's Civilizational Primacy, Part 4

The jāti-varṇa superstructure was the Indian way to manage the fundamental problem of stewarding it all, and when combined with the four āśramas and puruṣārthas it was the very essence of dharma. It was OUR way of managing collective wealth and stability, as well as individual well-being and stability. A way to exorcize monopolies and allow for individual aspirations. A way to preserve balance in society, such that each fulfilled themselves regardless of the condition they were born into, and each gave back to the collective what they received from it.

But we messed up. Those who, through the varṇa of their ancient ancestors, were born into brāhmaṇa jātis, grew supremacist and forgot the duties that come with their privilege. Those who, through the varṇa of their ancient ancestors, were born into kṣatriya jātis, failed to perform their dhārmika duties to protect fellow-Indians from the ravages of north-western invaders that have plagued our civilization for untold millennia. Those who, through the varṇa of their ancient ancestors, were born into the vaiśya jātis, failed to live true to their responsibility as stewards of the civilization’s physical wealth. They colluded with foreigners for self-interest, forgetting that dharma never commended jīva-interest when in violation of jana-prosperity. And so the rest of us, especially those who through the varṇa of their ancient ancestors, were born into the śūdra jātis, were open to oppression, exploitation, ostracization and subjugation for centuries- often by our own countrymen- and doubly by the foreigners who had no stake in our civilization. Failure on this fundamental problem threw solutions for all previous ones into disarray.

This then presents us a fundamental problem that the Indian civilization has not satisfactorily solved. Yes, the jāti-varṇa-āśrama superstructure worked, for a long time. But it was also susceptible to decay and deprecation, to ossification and rigidity. But no sooner had we realized this that our civilizational trajectory was snatched away from our hands, and enslaved for centuries to the benefit of foreigners. So we did not even have breathing space enough to think of solutions, of the next layer to embed into the fractal, moving forward in our civilizational trajectory. When we stepped out of the dungeon again, a thousand years later, the world had changed. Industry and technology were upon us. The old systems were obsolete.

But no other civilization has the learnings to show us any path forward either, for no other civilization has solved this fundamental problem. Further, they show dangerous deprecations on the other fundamental problems, which threaten to inhibit the forward trajectory. The Western and Islamic civilizations are yet to prove that they have a workable system to co-exist either with differing tribes, and even more those with differing ethos. As for equity, equality, egalitarianism – the values that appeal to our good sense in some form or the other – do we really want to believe that the Western model is a workable solution, a ladder out of the inequity mess? Our was once a civilization that valued learning and education above all else, the Western model requires graduate students to pile on lifelong debt.

So while the solution of one (democracy) on the fundamental problem of leadership is beginning to show cracks, the solution of another (shariah/higher order) is no solution at all. On both these counts, the Chinese civilization stands in contrast. It is not that it cannot co-exist with other tribes and ethos, but rather that it demands to co-exist on equal ground and nothing less. With those it can bully and run over, it does so without remorse. Arguably, it understands the fundamental problem of conflicting ethos better than any other civilization does, having emerged resurgent from being at the receiving end of it.

And on the fourth fundamental problem of individual well-being, the results are for all to see. The West has now breached the barriers of extremity, its care for individual freedom festering into a fetish that has isolated jīva from jana. Sales for all kinds of anxiety pills, painkillers and opioids in USA are testimony to where it stands. And what is the jīva in the Islamic and Chinese janas? Does he/she fully exist, or are they invisible units in the larger collective, the collective being supreme? The balance is off, the solution is not working.

The Indian civilization has a deep well to draw from, one that truly runs back thousands of years, and through it all it has a near infinite amount of lessons on each of these fundamental problems. The sum total of these lessons is dharma, the Indian answer to life- both for civilization and for consciousness.

It is a Fractal Maṇḍala. It is Home.

The Fractal Maṇḍala

Zoom in to the level of the Ṛgveda, where experts will tell us we find semi-nomadic pastoralists composing hymns to the ‘Gods of Natural Phenomena.’ When they want rain, they pray to Indra, the God of Thunder. When they conduct a ritual, they pray to Agni, the God of Fire. For every need they might have, they have a God. A God of Water, and of Wind. A Goddess of Dawn, and of the Rivers. A God here, a Goddess there. Ah, such simple pastoralists, these Vedic Indians.

Now remove that foreigner lens, and use that of our own civilization. Focus again. The Vedic yajña is the ritual of life, of the individual felt-experience. The physical agni is the flame of consciousness within each of us. Indra, the clarified agency that moves us forward through will. Maruts, the many impulses within us, ready to be channeled at any cause, always at Indra’s vanguard. Soma, the purified consciousness that emerges from life’s yajña, if conducted well, as does ghee from the physical ritual. Uṣā, the radiance of insight that can pierce through our ignorance with beatitude. Sarasvatī, the flow of clear and unabated thinking we need to achieve any life goal.

The Ṛgveda’s mantras lend themselves to many layers of interpretation, but at the deepest ones we find the flame of awakened consciousness – a manual for yoga, the union. It is a theme that is encoded in every level of Indian civilization. Agni, which rises from the earth and connects to the sky above, is called the great rodasi – connector. To relive Agni’s journey is the ultimate goal of Hindu life – the mokṣa in our puruṣārthas. In the endeavor of dharma to be in consonance with ṛta, in the eternal quest for harmony unique to our civilization, in our prayer to be led from darkness to light and from untruth to truth, we are constantly seeking the yajña.

It makes our civilization a fractal maṇḍala. No matter what level you look at, it reiterates the same truths. No matter what tangent you approach from, or what segment of the arc you start from, it always takes you back home.

Layers upon layers, each layer the same. Journey to the same Holocene onset, to the time when Svāyambhuva prays to Mahāviṣṇu as the floodwaters claim his lands. Incarnates Varāha and returns the earth above the water surface. A different layer, but still the victory of Indra over Vṛtra. The same story, but weaved onto a different thread. Some time during the era of the above Vedic Indians, in a different part of India, another man’s story will be added to the same thread- Rāma Dāśarathi. Another avatāra. Another layer. But Mahāviṣṇu again. This Rāma travels to southern India, and returns with an idol of Vāmana which he consecrates at Mathurā. Another layer, but Mahāviṣṇu again. Many centuries after Rāma, an Indian born in Mathurā will be added to this thread. We remember him as Kṛṣṇa, an epitome of Mahāviṣṇu. A fractal maṇḍala. Approach from any tangent, land at any level, but you will be returned to the source. To dharma. This is the true beauty of the Bhāratīya code.

Many centuries after Kṛṣṇa still, when Indian civilization briefly recedes, and the next layers are being added in the forests and the caves, as the Āraṇyakas and the Upaniṣads, our ancestors will look to these fundamental problems again, and draw from the fractal wisdom they inherit.

As light on its own, they will argue, is without attributes- or nirguṇa- such is consciousness itself. Pure and undifferentiated. And as light takes the shape and form of what it falls on, so does consciousness- it becomes saguṇa.

And this is what was being said in the Ṛgveda too, they will understand. This is why, they will come to realize, Soma is also called Candra, or the Moon. For the moon has no light of its own- it returns what is reflected onto it. And such is the nature of the purified consciousness that emerges in our mental yajña. It does not stand independent, it is what the yajña returns to us of our agni, our lamp of consciousness.

And so does the dharma vṛkṣa grow deeper, as generations of Indians build upon the wisdom of their ancestors to form an unbroken chain of civilizational memory and felt-experience. A fecund tree that continues to produce luminary leaves generation after generation, happy jīvas from a happy jana. Always fractal. Always a maṇḍala.

Embedded into every layer such that life becomes a yajña in any activity, for any jīva born to any varṇa and jāti, at any stage of their life. Dance becomes yajña, it becomes a part of dharma. Music becomes yajña, it becomes a part of dharma. To wake with the rising sūrya and prepare one’s physical vessel with namaskara becomes dharma, consonant as it is with ṛta. Every layer the same, the mission always the consonance. In the Ṛgveda this consonance comes through Agni- which rises from Prithvī and reaches Dyaus high above. It is the rodasi- the great connector. And when we kindle this sacrificial agni within us, the flame of our own consciousness, we are elevated beyond our physical bodies (prithvī) and taken to the transcendent consciousness (dyaus). This too is rodasi, the great connector. Asato mā sadgamaya, tamaso mā jyotirgamaya.

We also call this Yoga- the union.

A fractal at any level. A maṇḍala that always brings you home.

And here is the thing about a fractal maṇḍala. Land anywhere on it and ask the people- “where did you learn this from?”

“Oh, this is what we understand from the wisdom of our ancestors,” they will respond.

This is what the Upaniṣadic thinkers would have said, looking back to their Vedic forebears. This is what the Vedic Indians would have said, inheriting the learnings of the Mahābali and Pṛthu eras. Those eras in turn, we know, looked back at the primal days of Ādityas and Daityas. Long before the Śukra and Bṛhaspati of that time, there were Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras- and where did they get their wisdom from?

The Ṛgveda knows this. Who really knows where creation comes from? Perhaps even the gods do not, for they came after creation. There is no beginning to the maṇḍala, there is no end to it. As eternal as is ṛta, that eternal is dharma. Thus do we call it sanātana. Such were our ancestors, living the eternally dhārmika life.

It breeds comfort. It breeds complacence.

Close to two millennia after Veda Vyāsa, the lessons get forgotten again. The fundamental problems of civilizational trajectory again rear their ugly heads, and the jana shows signs of crumbling. Amṛta seems lost, so it is natural that mṛta approaches.

Came the Huns, the Scythians, the Greeks, the Iranians and more, and we were painfully reminded of the fundamental problem of conflicting ethos. Rose Kautilya. Rose Vikramāditya. Rose Skandagupta. We drew from our civilizational learnings and stood fast against the foreigners. They retreated, and those that didn’t became us, as Indra and Varuṇa once became one through Vasiṣṭha’s efforts. The fractal deepens such, the mesh grows stronger. The manthana is ever present.

The trajectory goes on. The cakra keeps moving. The vartana never stops. Only the vartins are needed. The śākhās proliferated, the dharma vṛkṣa grew vast and spread to distant shores. Bhārata Arrived.

Came the Arabs. Came the Turks. Came the Mongols. Again and again, wave after wave. Incessant challenges, for untold centuries. Breaking down every lesson our civilization had learnt, rupturing the formation of new layers of wisdom. Hijacking our civilizational trajectory and contaminating it. This was not one religion against another. This was adharma against dharma. For long centuries we were on the losing end. The wheel moves on. Bhārata became Hindustan.

And in the beautiful way that only the cosmos can joke with us, from the same part of India that once arose the adhārmika Haihayas- arose the dhārmika Marāthās. A historical maṇḍala if there ever was one. Reclamation was nigh, vindication was nigh. Almost, within grasp. Just a bit more.

Came the Europeans.

And to cut a long story short, we may skip forward to today, when the Hindustan has become India, and the Bhārata begs to be reiterated- to the question of civilization itself and that of civilizational trajectory. To the reality that ours is still a deeply colonized civilization, one where our trajectory is relegated as myth or worse- as Hindu revisionism. This grand civilization will not be in full bloom again without repairing all its synaptic connections- and no connection is arguably more important to civilization than its own history. There is no continuity of consciousness without memory, and there is no continuity of civilization without history. The project therefore to restore our history, and to understand the deep macrohistorical issues our civilization has already grappled with and possesses legitimate wisdom on, is a relevant project.

Authored by Amritanshu Pandey. Published by Brhat.