My dream
By Justice Markandey Katju
I wish to see India as a highly developed, highly industrialised, highly prosperous country, with its people enjoying a high standard of living.
But how can that be achieved ? It can be achieved if we change the mindsets of our people, and replace the backward feudal mindsets with modern ones.
It is easy to change the physical environment. Thus, it is easy to construct a building or build a road or a bridge.
It is a hundred times more difficult to change the minds of crores of our people and make them modern i.e. rational, logical and scientific
But without this change, we will not attain our objective.
At present, the masses in the Indian sub-continent are steeped in casteism, communalism, and superstitions, which are features of a feudal mindset. I have been attacking these in my articles on FB and elsewhere. But sometimes I feel I have been hitting my head against a wall, and it has been an exercise in futility.
Tulsidas in Ramcharitmanas writes :
“Moorakh hriday na chet, jo guru milen biranch sam
Phoolen phalen na beynt, jadapi sudha barse jalad“
i.e.
“A fool will never get wisdom, even if he has Brahma as his guru
A bamboo will never bear fruit or flowers, even if the heaven rains nectar on it“.
So sometimes I feel very disheartened, and start thinking that the Indian people are moorkhs who will never be enlightened; they are like bamboos, who will never bear fruit or flowers. Casteism, communalism and superstitions are entrenched in their heads. So I have been wasting my time trying to educate these blockheads.
But then I think, after all, they are my countrymen, whom I have to help. They have been let down by those who should have led them forward. So let me try to do my bit.
I have no intention of joining politics or becoming a political leader. But what I am trying to do is to give ideological guidance to my people, like the thinkers of the French Enlightenment.
As has been said, at a particular stage of history, ideas become a material force.
