Skilful Means in Theravada Buddhism




Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ),
Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE,
MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS,
MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI
Chairman and Managing Director,
MultiSpectra Consultants,
23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.
E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com




The early Buddhist scriptures (Pali Suttas) record that at the time of His enlightenment – when Siddhattha Gotama attained Nibbana and therefore freed Himself from the wheel of death and rebirth (Samsara) – He initially hesitated to teach His experience to other people. Lord Buddha, or ‘Awakened One,’ as He was henceforth known, felt that His teaching (Dhamma) was too difficult for a generation that ‘delights in worldliness’ to understand, and that its realisation lay beyond their spiritual grasp:


‘Those dyed in lust, wrapped in darkness,
Will never discern this abstruse Dhamma
Which goes against the worldly stream,
Subtle, deep, and difficult to see.’


At this point, however, He saw a lotus pond with some of the lotuses in bloom above the water surface and some lotus buds, submerged, and yet to rise above the water surface. Seeing this, Lord Buddha pondered, surveyed the world with His spiritual eye and saw that there were indeed people of different predilections – ‘some with little dust in their eyes and with much dust in their eyes, with keen faculties and with dull faculties … easy to teach and hard to teach.’ His deep compassion (Karuna) stirred by this vision, Lord Buddha resolved to teach the Dhamma to all:


‘Open for them are the doors to the deathless,
Let those with ears now show their faith …’


Having taken the decision to teach the Dhamma to the world, Lord Buddha was faced with the daunting task of rendering the Dhamma accessible to everyone – of devising a teaching strategy which could equally accommodate pupils ‘with keen faculties and with dull faculties.’ His solution to this problem was the practice of ‘skilful means’ (Upaya-Kosalla). Starting from the conviction that Nibbana was beyond thought and linguistic expression, Lord Buddha asserted that His spiritual teaching was only a useful ‘pointer’ to the truth – not the truth itself. This meant that the Dhamma – because merely provisional - was neither fixed nor dogmatic. Rather, being an expedient ‘means’ (Upaya) to an end, this teaching was dynamic and contextual. This pragmatic philosophical stance gave Lord Buddha enormous flexibility – it meant He was free to adjust or change His teaching to suit the level of His audience.


In its basic form, ‘skilful means’ appears in the early Buddhist texts as simply a progressive or ‘gradual instruction’ (Anupubbi Katha) on the Dhamma. When teaching to spiritually mature pupils, Lord Buddha directly explains complex philosophical aspects of His doctrine. To beginners, however, He offers preparatory lessons on general spiritual virtues before moving to advanced topics. This process is clearly illustrated in the account of His teaching to Upali:


‘Then the Blessed One gave the householder Upali progressive instruction, that is, talk on giving, talk on virtue, talk on the heavens; He explained the danger, degradation and defilement in sensual pleasures and the blessing of renunciation. When He knew that the householder Upali’s mind was ready, receptive, free from hindrances, elated, and confident, He expounded to Him the teaching special to Lord Buddha: suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path.’


In its more advanced guise, ‘skilful means’ assumes forms that in other contexts could be construed as contradictory or even heretical. For example, in the Tevijja Sutta, two young Brahmins (followers of the Vedic tradition) cannot decide which Vedic teacher offers the correct path to ‘union’ with the aforementioned god, Brahma. Having heard of Lord Buddha’s wisdom, they approach Him for advice on the matter. Lord Buddha, though, does not accept ‘union with Brahma’ as the final goal of salvation - for Him salvation is Nibbana. However, recognising the Brahmins’ sincerity and spiritual potential, He retains their religious terminology and through a progressive question-answer session seeks to wean them from their theism. Firstly, He points out that because the Vedic sages have not seen Brahma ‘face to face,’ they cannot guarantee Brahma’s ultimate ontological status. He then points out that, unlike Brahma, these sages are ‘encumbered’ by the five hindrances and therefore lack the moral purity to achieve ‘communion’ with Him after death. In contrast, because He is ‘unencumbered’ by the five hindrances, Lord Buddha claims that He possesses genuine spiritual knowledge. In deference to the spiritual level of the two Brahmins, however, He presents this transcendent knowledge using Vedic terminology:


‘…I know Brahma and the world of Brahma, and the way to the world of Brahma, and the path of practice whereby the world of Brahma may be gained.’


The young Brahmins, won over by Lord Buddha’s arguments, now ask Him to teach this way to ‘union with Brahma.’ Lord Buddha, though, changes tack and introduces them to His ‘holy life’ – in particular the purifying meditation on the ‘divine abodes’ (Brahma-Vihara). Through this exercise, He points out that the practitioner cultivates the moral virtues of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, and psychically transmits them to the four points of the compass. Lord Buddha assures them that this is the correct ‘way to union with Brahma’ – a ‘way’ which by now has subtly morphed into a preparatory stage on the path to Nibbana. The two Brahmins, grateful for this illuminating teaching, praise Lord Buddha’s ‘gradual instruction’ and its revelatory power:


ʻExcellent, Reverend Gotama, excellent! It is as if someone were to set up what had been knocked down, or to point out the way to one who had got lost, or to bring an oil-lamp into a dark place, so that those with eyes could see what was there. Just so the Reverend Gotama has expounded the Dhamma in various ways.’


Similarly, it is well known that Lord Buddha emphatically denied any notion of a permanent soul (Atta). Instead, He maintained that the human being is comprised of five impermanent ‘aggregates’ (Khandha). When, though, Lord Buddha is confronted with a Charvaka (materialist) who believes that the human being is comprised only of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) and that there is no moral mechanism of kamma and rebirth, He recognises that strong ‘medicine’ is required. To wean the Charvaka from His extreme materialism, Lord Buddha therapeutically presents Him with the opposite extreme - the idealist belief in a permanent soul (Atta). While, in Lord Buddha’s view, this Vedic doctrine is also false because a permanent soul contradicts the evidence of experience, He deems it preferable to materialism because it recognises a moral dimension of reality. That is, if the soul is an enduring entity, then it is a morally responsible agent. According to the Vedic law of kamma, the everyday actions of the human being determine his or her soul’s destiny. Also, Lord Buddha judges that at this stage of the Charvaka’s instruction, the ‘permanent soul’ is easier to grasp intellectually than His empirical theory of the ‘aggregates.’ Then, when He is satisfied that the Charvaka is sufficiently cured of his nihilistic beliefs, and that his mind is clear and receptive, Lord Buddha sets the soul-doctrine aside and advances His own theory of the human personality.


The foregoing paradigm of ‘skilful means’ pioneered by Lord Buddha in the early Suttas provided a template for all future developments in Buddhist pedagogy.

A Buddhist Ecumenical Declaration


Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
BCE (Hons.) (Jadavpur), MTech (Civil) (IIT Kharagpur), PhD (Civil) (IIT Kharagpur), Cert.MTERM (AIT Bangkok), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI
Chairman and Managing Director,
MultiSpectra Consultants,
23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani,
Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.
E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com




This Buddhist Ecumenical Declaration is adapted from the one prepared by Venerable Walpola Sri Rahula in 1981.


1. Whatever our sects, denominations or systems, as Buddhists we all accept the Buddha as our Master who gave us the Teaching.
2. We all take refuge in the Triple Jewel: the Buddha, our Teacher; the Dhamma, his teaching; and the Sangha, the Community of holy ones. In other words, we take refuge in the Teacher, the Teaching and the Taught.
3. We do not believe that this world is created and ruled by a god at his will.
4. Following the example of the Buddha, our Teacher, who is embodiment of Great Compassion (mahakaruna) and Great Wisdom (mahapanna), we consider that the purpose of life is to develop compassion for all living beings without discrimination and to work for their good, happiness and peace and to develop wisdom leading to the realisation of Ultimate Truth.
5. We accept the Four Noble Truths taught by the Buddha, namely, Dukkha, the fact that our existence in this world is in predicament, is impermanent, imperfect, unsatisfactory, full of conflict; Samudaya, the fact that this state of affairs is due to our egoistic selfishness based on the false idea of self; Nirodha, the fact that there is definitely the possibility of deliverance, liberation, freedom from this predicament by the total eradication of the egoistic selfishness; and Magga, the fact that this liberation can be achieved through the Middle Path which is eight-fold, leading to the perfection of ethical conduct (sila), mental discipline (samadhi) and wisdom (panna).
6. We accept the universal law of cause and effect taught in the Patichchasamuppada (Conditioned Genesis or Dependent Origination) and accordingly we accept that everything is relative, interdependent and interrelated and nothing is absolute, permanent and everlasting in this universe.
7. We understand, according to the teaching of the Buddha, that all conditioned things (sankhara) are impermanent (anichcha) and imperfect and unsatisfactory (dukkha) and all conditioned and unconditioned things (dhamma) are without self (anatta).
8. We accept the Thirty-seven Qualities conducive to Enlightenment (bodhipakkhiyadhamma) as different aspects of the Path taught by the Buddha leading to Enlightenment, namely:
Four Forms of Presence of Mindfulness (satipatthana);
Four Right Efforts (sammappadhana);
Four Bases of Supernatural Powers (iddhipada);
Five Faculties (indriya: saddha, viriya, sati, samadhi, panna);
Five Powers (bala, same five qualities as above);
Seven Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhanga);
Eight-fold Noble Path (ariyamagga).
9. We admit that in different countries there are differences with regard to the ways of life of Buddhist monks, popular Buddhist beliefs and practices, rites and rituals, ceremonies, customs and habits. These external forms and expressions should not be confused with the essential teachings of the Buddha.

Buddhist Meditation


Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI
Chairman and Managing Director,
MultiSpectra Consultants,
23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani,
Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.
E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com




Man's quest for an end to his suffering has led him into an exploration of his inner self, its working and its dysfunctional behaviour under certain circumstances. Under such conditions,a radical shift in consciousness, perception and attitude is the only succour for a tormented mind. This process, involving the destruction of suffering, is based on the Four Noble Truths enunciated by the Buddha which are as follows:
1. Life contains suffering.
2. Suffering has a cause, and the cause can be known.
3. Suffering can be brought to an end.
4. The path to end suffering has eight parts.


The Buddha also laid out the Noble Eightfold Path which is given below:
Right view
Right intention
Right speech
Right action
Right livelihood
Right effort
Right mindfulness
Right concentration


As a Buddhist, the author is an “insider” and though he is well conversant with Buddhist tenets, his purpose here is not to explain them. Rather he would prefer to deal with meditation which lies at the heart of the spiritual practice of dharmic ( spiritual, Sanskrit dharma, Pali dhamma ) people. Atma dwipa bhava (Be your own island, that is,refuge) : this saying of the Buddha resonates among His followers whose number and geographical spread has made Buddhism a world faith.


Named Siddhartha by His parents when He was born, the Buddha was the only founder of a faith who claimed He was a human being, pure and simple. He always denied that He was divine. His family name was Gautama ( Pali Gotama ). However, His encounter with Angulimala, the robber, reveals to us who He really was. According to the Buddha, man sits in command over his destiny; he is however unaware of this fact and abdicates his responsibility of controlling his future, even death. This is so because man is, in a deep philosophical sense, deluded, asleep and unaware of his true nature. He normally identifies himself with his body, which was born and hence will die, some day. This gives rise to vices, insecurity and belief in that what is not. He also believes that he has relatives and friends and, if he clings onto them tightly enough, he will one day, after death, go to the nebulous place called heaven. But it is not true. The lacuna in man's thinking becomes disturbingly clear to him when he finds that he is suffering. Man needs to be awakened and when this awakening process is complete, man will rise from the ashes of the world of the senses that he has just burnt to the world of pure consciousness. Buddhism is a journey where a man starts asleep and wakes up awake. In doing so, he sheds aside nothingness to awaken to a single state of Being. The process by which this takes place is meditation. Books have been written on meditation and it would be futile for the author to be didactic; so he will try to be brief. But one thing must be said. Buddhism represents the crème de la crème of Indian religious thought and philosophy.


The Buddha, unlike Christ, did not project Himself as a saviour of man. The Buddha did not refer to God either, as a supreme dispenser of justice and did not claim to be a son or some other relation of God. Rather, His title, Buddha, means one who is awake. He is considered to be the messiah who showed the path to eternity. The Buddha gave his teaching 'for the good of many, for the happiness of many, for showing compassion to the world, for realising the spiritual purpose of life' ( bahujanahitaya bahujanasukhaya lokanukampaya, arthaya hitaya ). He told man that though he is asleep, the capacity to be awakened is in him and also taught man the path to awakening. But man must walk that path himself, alone. Man must realise that he is always alone, whether it be high atop the mountains, in the company of his relatives or in the morning crowd in the downtown of a metropolitan city. A positive attitude to aloneness can develop in man when he can take a mental sword and cleave a distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Loneliness has a negative connotation in the sense that it implies a craving for company of other human beings, the exact opposite of the self-sufficiency implied by aloneness. The capacity to tread the path to nirvana ( Pali nibbana ), which means freedom, is already in man, he just has to use it.


He searched, He meditated, He found: this aptly summarises the awakening of the Buddha. When a man suffers, it is useless for him to talk of God, or to fast and otherwise to torture his body if his suffering is not reduced by any or all of these. The Buddha realised this fact and after His awakening promulgated the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. What is required of man is to effect a radical shift in consciousness from the finite to the infinite using right concentration. The concentrated focus is always on suffering and its elimination. The law of cause and effect is at work here too. If one is deluded, one suffers. If one studies the Four Noble Truths, one sees that man should identify the cause of suffering and systematically go about destroying it using the Noble Eightfold Path. The result of meditation is tremendous. One transcends the boundaries of his body; he senses that the entire universe has become his body. He senses that he has exchanged a weak mind for a strong one. He senses that though he may continue to reside in his mortal body, his consciousness has become irreversibly altered. He feels himself being pervaded by peace. He does not become a bird soaring in the sky; he becomes as boundless as the sky itself. He becomes awakened; prabuddha. The Buddha did not give His doctrine for strong wills only; His statements are just as applicable to weaker minds provided they have the determination to follow Him. He asked for nothing more than courage and promised eternity.


In response to questioning by devotees in the kingdom of Kosala as to the importance or unimportance of belief, the Buddha pointed out the distinction between knowing and believing. Believing always connotes a second-hand approach to Truth; knowing about something through the experience of someone else. Knowing means a first-hand direct knowledge of Truth and the result of this distinction is that the modicum of doubt that always accompanies belief is absent in knowledge. Freedom of thought is permitted by the Buddha to His devotees so that they can discriminate and find Truth.


Thoughts flow like an endless stream in the mind of man. Several of these are highly disturbing and cause a man to become restless or worse. There is absolute tranquillity in meditation because the suffering has been clinically identified, its cause clinically identified and now the sole mission is to remove both the cause and the effect. It must be remembered that cause and effect are not meant here in the Christian sense of the term with a benign God sitting and evaluating each thought or action of a man and delivering an effect of each cause. According to Buddhism, the universe is in a state of flux and, in Japan, a circle or ensho is drawn to represent this eternal rule of cause and effect. Modern science and technology liberate but also trap man in fields such as astrophysics. When one looks up at the night sky, one is looking backwards in time because light has a finite speed however great that speed may be. However, we cannot see the extremities of the universe and logic tells us that the universe cannot have a spatial extremity. Similarly, the universe cannot have a zero-time extremity. Man lives in a space-time frame.


An explanation as to the types of meditation in vogue is in order here. Vipashyana ( Pali vipassana; passana means seeing ) meditation is practised in south Asia and other countries which practice Theravada Buddhism ( literally, the way of the Elders ), which is also called Hinayana Buddhism. Zen meditation is practised in East Asia, that is China, Korea and Japan, which are among the countries that practice Mahayana Buddhism ( literally, the greater vehicle ). Meditation is something that cannot be fully explained in words, it has to be experienced to be understood completely. Knowing about meditation is one thing; knowing meditation is quite another. A man can sit alone, cross-legged, in a quiet room in the full lotus posture ( padmasana ) or, failing that, in the half-lotus posture ( bhadrasana ) and try to enter into vipashyana meditation ( the third posture of sitting is called sukhasana )and yet there may be something in the world of the senses lurking in the mind that must be thrown aside from the mind before he can meditate. In zen meditation ( the Sanskrit word dhyana means the same thing as the Pali word jhana, the Chinese word chaan and the Japanese word zen ), one can take the help of koans or spiritual puzzles, which are in prevalence in China, Korea and Japan, on which he can ruminate just prior to meditation in an attempt to propel the mind to a transcendental state in which he can meditate. If one is unable to start doing meditation oneself, one should take the help of a guru ( literally, one who dispels darkness ) who will guide him in the initial stages. One must sit, preferably, in the lotus posture with one's spine erect. There must be no slumping of the back, the head should be straight as if suspended by means of a string. Another analogy adopted is that the head should be straight as if bearing the sky on its top. The hands may be placed in the bhumisparsha mudra ( bhumisparsha gesture ), a mudra in which we find so many statues of the Buddha. This gesture is also called sakshi ( Sanskrit for witness ) mudra. Alternatively, a man's hands may be placed on his lap, all fingers except the thumbs interlocked and the thumbs touching each other. This gesture is very popular in East Asia, that is, in China, Korea and Japan. Yet another mudra consists of the hands straight, placed on the knees, and the thumb and the next finger touching each other with the other fingers straight. This gesture of the hands is called jnana mudra. After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and focus on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath. In all meditation, the next step is samadhi, which is a transcendental state. It may be described by sat( being ), chit ( consciousness ) and ananda ( bliss ). In vipashyana meditation, he must then enter into vipashyana in which awareness is focussed on all parts of the physical body in turn and the sensations felt by those parts of the body are consciously sensed. Awareness and equanimity together, symbolise vipashyana meditation. If either part is missing, one cannot attain enlightenment. Zazen ( the practice of zen meditation ) also leads to enlightenment but by a somewhat different procedure. Zen has always positioned itself as quintessential Buddhism, implying that what is not zen is not Buddhism. This position of zen is untenable but it is undeniable that prajna ( wisdom ) and samata ( equanimity ) are essential in zen. Zen poses spiritual puzzles called koans to its followers; spiritual puzzles verging on the nonsensical. At the usual existential level, koans cannot be said to have any coherence and an existential leap is needed to bring harmony. This usually involves satori ( another word is kensho which means seeing into one's own nature ). The spiritual puzzle posed by a koan may be such that even a strong will may be unable to go to the transcendental plane. The role of the zen master is important here. He can deliver a shock, an emotional one usually suffices but a physical blow or other corporal shock may be needed so that the spiritual aspirant is propelled into a higher level of consciousness. The author's feeling is that if one is able to reside in kshana ( this moment ), that is, the 'now' prolonged forever,that is, in an infinite series of 'nows', man would be much happier. Vipashyana also leads to enlightenment. Meditation is ultimately a do-it-yourself project where a man must shed his ego and much else and discover at the end of his solitary journey that he is awake.


In this context, it would be in the fitness of things to look at the Yoga Sutra ( method of Yoga ) written by Patanjali in India, who came a few centuries after the Buddha, in the light of the teachings of the Buddha.


The Yoga Sutra deals with meditation leading to samadhi. It has eight steps, the first three of which are preparatory and the next five of which gradually lead to meditation. The eight steps are yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. The first two steps deal with a clean and virtuous lifestyle. The third step is taking a seat and a posture conducive to meditation. After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and do pranayama which is focussing on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath. The next steps lead to samadhi.


It is evident that the writer of this Sutra was heavily influenced by Buddhism and may have been a Buddhist. The focus on attentiveness towards breath, the description of the state of samadhi, the absence of any reference to God or any superhuman power, the stress on one's own effort to attain liberation, the focus on prajna ( wisdom ) and samata ( balance ) and some other facets in the Sutra are in accordance with the teachings of Buddhism.


Ordinarily, animal instincts bind a man to the world of the senses. Man lacks the initiative to free himself from them. Rather, he reposes his faith on some superhuman power whom he tries to propitiate in the hope that he may be rescued from his troubles. Patanjali does not theorise much; rather he goes straight to the action of meditation. Meditation may also be described as a tapasya ( a Sanskrit word whose root lies in the Sanskrit word tapah which means heat ), a burning of the impurities in the mind. In medieval India, the great scholar Shankaracharya has been described as a prachchhanna ( Sanskrit 'in essence' ) Buddhist.


Before the advent of Buddhism in China, the teachings of Confucius and Lao-tzu were mainly prevalent and and while they gave a certain moral order, true spirituality was absent. This inchoate body of teachings had and still has many followers. However, the arrival of Buddhism in China from India resulted in a spiritual awakening in the Chinese hsin ( mind ).


The result of the awakening of man due to meditation is drastic. It is as if the universe had always existed but one had been going about with his eyes closed and has now suddenly opened them. In the plane of the senses, his external world does not change but his way of processing his external world undergoes a drastic change. He becomes more peaceful with himself and with others. This is the significance of the koan uttered in zendos ( temples and other places where zen is performed ):
Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water;
After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water.
An awakened person feels that he is surrounded by peace at all times. It is important to understand that nobody tells him this; he feels it himself. He goes about doing his daily activities, but his way of processing his world has fundamentally altered for the better. He realises that he cannot and need not control all aspects of his external physical world. He realises that he gains more by letting go. He becomes aware of the non-peaceful moments in his life. He opts for shifting his consciousness to his mind and becoming aware of his internal mental processes when waiting, for example, in a traffic jam or while waiting in a queue. He opts for harmony in his mental processes rather than chaos. Genjo Hsuan-tsang, the great Chinese monk who visited India during the time of Emperor Harshavardhana, once made the following remark about the state of realisation : 'It is like a man drinking water; he knows by himself whether it is cold or hot'.


Buddhism disagrees with Christianity on the issue of birth-and-death. Since it does not believe in zero-time, it does not believe in the Christian perception of creation. Also, the two world faiths differ, as has been mentioned and implied before, on their views regarding a supreme God and the presence or absence of a soul ( Sanskrit atman, Pali atta ). Christianity believes in the presence of an individual soul inside each man; Buddhism does not.


Meditation has been performed by theoreticians and philosophers as well as by rank empiricists. While their emphasis may have been different, it has been universally recognised that they have all contributed to the dharma. Also, meditation is now spreading to the West as well. It is said that Buddhism can be taught to people of any cultural background. That is why in spite of not having any tradition of meditation, the knowledge and traditions of the East are now spreading to the West. Westerners are learning that meditation is not a kind of mental suicide, as some were ought to believe, but an active mental process.


Buddhism transformed the life of Emperor Ashoka of India. The greatest Indian Emperor ever, ruling over a territory much larger than the current Republic of India, he did much to spread Buddhism. In his younger days, he was a warrior and conquered many territories. After he conquered Kalinga, or the modern east Indian state of Orissa, he was moved by the suffering of the people. Mentally tormented, he found peace after embracing Buddhism. Emperor Kanishka of the Kushan dynasty was another great Buddhist ruler whose vast empire encompassed a large part of India as well as a vast territory in western China ( modern Sinkiang ) and Central Asia.


One dictum in Chinese summarises the essence of zen: wu shih yu hsin, wu hsin yu shih. The meaning which is very deep is “Be business-less in mind, be mind-less in business”. The sentence is self-explanatory.


The Buddha showed how man can integrate himself to the cosmos. In this and in many other aspects, He was a student of life and a leader of men. In a caste-ridden society, the Buddha strove to establish the equality of all men. In this, He was the world's first great socialist. Lao-tzu of ancient China in his book Tao Te Ching ( The Way ) described the qualities a true leader should have; leaders tread fresh grass amongst other things. The Buddha possessed all of them and much more. He was the ultimate tyagi, that is, renunciant; renouncing a throne, comforts of a palace, a wife and a son to leave his palace on horseback in search of Truth at night. In this, He showed Himself to be an exemplar of Holiness inspiring millions of others to follow suit. He elevated Himself to the level of a Purushottama (Sanskrit a Superhuman Man ).


Buddhism preaches ultimate tolerance to all faiths, even those which are incoherent and self-contradictory. A Buddhist hates none, loves all. The overarching philosophy of Buddhism encompasses love for all creatures on earth. Once, the Buddha said 'Whoever sees me, sees the teaching'. That is the reason why it is invigorating to keep a statue of the Buddha in one's place of meditation just as a Christian keeps a crucifix in his room.


Buddhism is particularly relevant in the violence-ridden world today. As said before, Buddhism treats all men as equal. Faith in justice; faith in the power of reason; faith in the bona-fide standing of any petitioner in a court of law; faith in the ability of people to govern themselves ensuring equality of every human being; faith in glasnost, that is openness, are the premises on which a civilised society is built. The unpleasant truth is that these premises are now under assault in some parts of the world from some quarters. As a Buddhist, the author feels that mankind can do much better.


The Buddha preached sometimes through formal sermons and also sometimes through answers to questions posed by devotees. Some non-Buddhists have sought to attack His teachings on the ground that He was silent on the issue of presence or absence of God. These people fail to realise that if the Buddha was silent on the issue of God, He was only reposing His faith in man and man's ability to gain enlightenment through his own efforts.


With sambodhi ( supreme enlightenment ) of a man, he realises that death can be defeated only if it can be made unreal. His false self, or nothingness, dissolves into a vibrant awakened being.

A Lost Victory


Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI
Chairman and Managing Director,
MultiSpectra Consultants,
23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.
E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com




Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic.


I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947.


To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule.


My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ).


My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house.


My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult.


The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu.


Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years.


My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.'


My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971.


Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer.


Soon after coming to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by leaving East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.'


In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh.


In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather.


My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake.


My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence.


Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata.


On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.'


My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me.


At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man.


Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai.


It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world.


I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata.


The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to


1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records.


2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest.


3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest.


4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India.


5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns.


6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same.


7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people.


8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples.


9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection.


10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today.


11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens.


12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas.


13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind.


14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress.


15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'.


16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable.


17. Eliminate tokenism.


18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population.


19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata.


20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it.


21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled.


In hindsight, my grandfather could have won a victory due to the expulsion of the British from his homeland but he lost the victory by defecting to Kolkata from East Bengal.

​India Today


Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI
Chairman and Managing Director,
MultiSpectra Consultants,
23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.
E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com




"Of all the dangers facing India today, by far the severest is the presence of criminals in Government service. One does not have to look very far. Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, have criminal records."
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya


Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic.


I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947.


To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule.


My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). He once cautioned my great-grandfather saying 'It is my conviction that Hindus can never be your friends. I have tried all my life and failed. How can you trust people who will not allow you into their temples? There is no place for you in their society.'


My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather wrote 'The India of today is hard to define. It is not historical India. Being multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic, unlike France or Germany for instance, it is not a nation state in the Western sense. From ancient times, there have been two terms, 'Bharatiya' ( Indian ) and 'Bharatvasi' ( people who live in India ), implicitly implying that not all people who live in India are Indians. For almost all of its history, India has been a geographical entity rather than a political one. Perhaps the best definition is that the India of today is a union of a number of Indian states on the continent of Asia.'


My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult.


The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu.


Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years.


My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.'


However, my grandfather was deeply dismayed by the acrimony between Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. He agreed with Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose that India, in its illiterate state, could not function as a true democracy and a period of benevolent dictatorship was needed after freedom from the British to uplift India after which India could transition to a democracy. He proposed to Mahatma Gandhi that there should be a social revolution to accompany the attainment of freedom from the British. My grandfather was greatly influenced by the French Revolution. Mahatma Gandhi told my grandfather that the social revolution would take place after India had obtained its freedom from the British. He said that he had already started the social revolution in a small way by calling untouchable Hindus 'Harijans' ( at present Harijans are called 'Scheduled Castes' ). As things transpired, after India became free from British colonial rule, the 1950 Constitution was promulgated and the social revolution never took place.


My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971.


Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer.


Soon after defecting to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by defecting from East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' My grandfather was deeply disillusioned with Nehru and his policies and with India's deteriorating relations with China. He said 'India must not forget that Chinese monks Faxian, Xuanxang and Yijing are considered to be great Acharyas by us. India must cultivate good relations with China. Otherwise, it will be defeated in war.' In 1962, India was trounced in a war by China who won a decisive victory.


In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh.


In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather.


My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake.


My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence.


Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata.


On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.'


My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me.


At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man.


Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai.


It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world.


I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata.


The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to


1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records.


2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest.


3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest.


4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India.


5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns.


6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same.


7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people.


8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples.


9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection.


10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today.


11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens.


12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas.


13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind.


14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress.


15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'.


16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable.


17. Eliminate tokenism.


18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population.


19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata.


20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it.




21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled.

Eight Traits of Exceptionally Motivated Entrepreneurs


Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI
Chairman and Managing Director,
MultiSpectra Consultants,
23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani,
Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.
E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com




The highly motivated live for more than just earning money; they live to have an impact. Money can only be so motivating before it becomes shallow and meaningless. The highly motivated feel a deep sense of purpose and are compelled to manifest what they feel, vision and seek. It is this deep feeling which fuels their motivation; after all, e-motion equates to energy in motion.


1. Take full responsibility.


In a society quick to make excuses where people blame everything from their childhood to the government for their lack of success, the highly motivated refuse to buy into any type of mentality that would make someone other than themselves responsible for their success or lack of it. The highly motivated never give their power over to outside people, events for circumstances.


Motivated individuals live by the simple mantra “it is up to me.” They understand that other opinions do not have to become their reality and make the choice to lay the future of their success completely within their own grasp. The idea of being fully responsible may be daunting, but more than daunting, the highly motivated find this pressure inspiring. Certainly, there will be things in life they cannot control, such as nature, the past and other people but it is for this reason they take full responsibility for directing their thoughts, emotions, choices and actions.


2. Live with clear intent.


The key ingredient which sets the highly motivated apart from others is they live their lives intentionally. They are doing what they believe they were placed upon this earth to do. They know their purpose and they live it on purpose. Having a sense of purpose in life is one of the most important elements in becoming a fully evolved human being. The exceptionally motivated feel the most alive when they are doing what they love.


Because they live on purpose, their entire life is directed towards doing their job right and to the very best of their ability. They love what they do and it shows. Their conviction is as evident as it is persuasive. It helps them draw the right people into their lives to partner with. Because they live with clear intention, with their focus largely on bringing value into the lives of others, the money takes care of itself.


3. Willingness to sacrifice.


The highly motivated rarely question if they are willing to pay the price to get them the success they seek. The greatest difference between the successful and unsuccessful is finding out what it will cost them to make their goals a reality. The successful are relentless in their efforts to making their dreams a reality and they will not be heard complaining about the effort or time it takes to do what they need to do. The successful are clear on the why’s of what they do. Their why’s provide the deeper meaning responsible for sustaining their motivation. They understand they can get practically anything they want out of life - if they are willing to pay the price.


4. Stay focused.


All of us are overloaded with tasks, messages and emails vying for our time. This is why the ability to stay focused is essential for achievement. All things are important and love should always come first, which is why the highly motivated remain clear on their priorities. They know where and how to invest their time to achieve their big pay-offs down the road. They organise their time in a way which allows them to focus on their passions while also being able to sustain the support they need.


Motivated individuals create a supportive team to keep them focused and pointed in the direction of their larger purpose. Again, motivation is contagious so it doesn’t matter who it is - everyone becomes an essential part of their journey. The highly motivated stay close to their goals, involve those closest to them in their passions and create a crusade. They spend a significant amount of time focusing on and visioning their bigger picture making it reality. Like any habit, staying focused becomes easier the more it is practised.


5. Become an expert.


The highly motivated study their field with fervour and passion. They know it better than anyone else and are on the continual search for knowledge. Many of these individuals find a way to share their purpose in whatever forum best suited for them; coaching, mentoring, speaking, teaching, blogging, writing, TV, radio, etc. They make it a point to share their information with as many as possible. The exceptionally motivated believe in education and in the idea that people need to learn and love to learn.


6. Written and spoken maps.


The highly motivated put their dreams into written form. In doing this they create an action plan which puts them on the path to where they want to go. They are well aware that goals which are not written down are most often not achieved. When goals are written they become real as if writing them down creates a signed contract. Not only are they writing their goals down but the highly motivated also make use of “auto suggestion” and read their goals out loud daily. Speaking them serves to reprogramme their unconscious mind re-directing their thinking towards their bigger picture. As they communicate their goals, their goals become real and they develop a deeper belief in them, thereby, increasing their motivation to achieve them.


7. Keep going.


Passion drives perseverance. It may sound simple but the highly motivated are truly passionate about what they have set out to achieve because they can see the value it will have on those whom they seek to benefit. Because the deeper purpose of their mission has the potential to bring value to the world, thoughts of stopping or giving up never enter as ideas for consideration. The highly motivated hold a vision of what they want and do all they can to ensure their vision is bulletproof to frustration, doubt, confusion, rejection and failures. The road to success is not an easy one but nor does it have to be arduous. The exceptionally motivated live for their mission which makes each part of their journey useful and worth it.


8. Don’t delay.


The highly motivated are acutely aware that time is limited. They understand they do not have forever to live and manifest their dreams. The clock is ticking - the time is now - there are no time-outs and sooner or later their number is going to be called. Motivated individuals know this but rather than seeing this as something negative or depressing they use it to spur them on to go after what they want as energetically and as passionately as possible.


Success is one thing, and for the exceptionally motivated it is a great thing, but what is even more important to these individuals is having an impact. They are driven by a deeper emotional component of serving a purpose larger than themselves. Having an impact is what drives the desire to turn their purpose into a crusade. For this reason, they are willing to suffer, sacrifice and succeed as long as their success brings value. It is their primary motivation to be free in advancing their own lives and those of others. It is their desire to live uninhibited and to express and fulfil their purpose. It is this deeply felt purpose which drives their motivation. They seek to leave a legacy of great significance.

​Inde


Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya
BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI
Chairman and Managing Director,
MultiSpectra Consultants,
23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.
E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com




Il y a quelque temps, le Dr Sudhir Jain, qui est le directeur de l'Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, m'a demandé d'écrire quelque chose sur le véritable état de l'Inde en ce moment privé et sans le battage médiatique que certains Indiens égarés et mal informés se livrent continuellement. Après avoir écrit le Dr Jain, dans lequel j'ai placé l'Inde dans le cadre de la communauté plus large des nations modernes, je décidai de faire quelques faits désagréables au sujet de l'Inde d'aujourd'hui à la disposition du public. Il est une vertu d'être une droite causeur et de dire clairement que la piste record de l'Inde depuis l'indépendance a été lamentable, pour dire le moins.


Je fais partie d'une famille Bouddhiste ayant mes ancêtres dans la région de Chittagong du East Bengal, aujourd'hui le Bangladesh. Ma famille a été (importune?) invités du gouvernement de l'Inde depuis 1947.


Pour mettre les choses en perspective, la dynastie Pala du Bengale a été la dernière dynastie Bouddhiste en Inde. Ni l'invasion Arabe du Sind, ni les invasions de Mahmud de Ghazni ont eu un effet quelconque sur le Bengale et la dynastie Pala régné sans interruption jusqu'à 1162 AD quand ils ont été renversés par la dynastie Hindoue Sena. Muhammad Ghori a battu Prithviraj Chauhan en 1192 AD. Quelques années plus tard, l'un des généraux de Muhammad Ghori balayé à travers les plaines du nord de l'Inde et Lakshmana Sena, le dernier souverain de la dynastie Sena, ont fui sans donner un combat en entendant les forces Musulmanes qui approchent. Bengal est venu sous la domination Musulmane et le resta jusqu'à la victoire des Britanniques à la bataille de Plassey en 1757 AD. Par la règle Musulmane de temps terminé au Bengale en 1757 AD, la plupart des Bengalis avaient converti à l'Islam pour des raisons diverses. Sous la domination Musulmane, un afflux de mots Arabes et Persans dans la langue Bengali a eu lieu, mais, surtout, Musulmans Bengalis et Bengalis non-Musulmans ont continué à parler et à écrire dans une langue Bengali commune avec un script Indo-Aryenne, sauf pour quelques mots sont encore différents pour Musulmans Bengalis et Bengalis non-Musulmans. Le dialecte local de Bengali à East Bengal est différent du dialecte local du Bengali au West Bengal, mais encore une fois ce ne repose pas sur des lignes religieuses. Pendant des siècles, les Musulmans Bengalis et Bengalis non-Musulmans vivaient côte à côte et en harmonie, tout le monde à pratiquer sa propre religion. Il est à noter que mes ancêtres ont vécu pendant des siècles sous domination Musulmane.


Ma famille a son origine dans la région de Chittagong du East Bengal et a été la pratique du Bouddhisme depuis les temps anciens, probablement même avant la naissance de Jésus Christ. Comme ma famille était dans le sud-est extrême du Bengale, près de la frontière avec la Birmanie (aujourd'hui Myanmar), ils ont conservé leur religion Bouddhiste jusqu'à ce jour. Mon grand-grand-père Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya était un érudit Bouddhiste noté. Il partage son temps entre Chittagong et Rangpur. Il était réputé pour son érudition de Pali et Sanskrit et aussi pour son raffinement et de noblesse. Il a écrit un commentaire sur le Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. Sa spécialité était l'étude du Tipitaka Pali, le Sutta Pitaka, le Vinaya Pitaka et l'Abhidhamma Pitaka. Il était conservateur à l'âme, réticente, ascétique, austère et puritain (comme tout le monde dans ma famille moi-même y compris lui aussi était un non-fumeur et non buveur).


Mon grand-père était Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. Il était le Diwan de Tripura quand Tripura était un état princier et était un ami proche du poète Bengali et lauréat du prix Nobel Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore appela «Diwan Bahadur ji» comme une marque de respect. Mon grand-père parlait couramment en Sanskrit, Pali et Arabe, entre autres langues. Une personne très érudit, il a écrit et publié plusieurs livres sur le Bouddhisme. Parmi ses livres, «Buddhist Civilisation in Asia» se démarque. Une de sa thèse de pionnier était que la mer Caspienne a été nommé d'après Mahakashyapa, un disciple direct du Lord Buddha. Mis à part la similitude des noms, il fonde sa thèse sur la présence de Kalmouk Bouddhistes en Kalmoukie, une partie de la Russie au nord-ouest de la mer Caspienne. Après sa retraite de la Cour Tripura, il se fixa à Chittagong où il a construit une grande maison Zamindari.


Mon grand-père était un orthodoxe et puritain Bouddhiste. Il était résolument opposé à l'idolâtrie. Il croyait que, puisque la majorité des Bengalis étaient Musulmans, Bengali non-Musulmans avaient leur seul avenir à vivre en harmonie avec les Musulmans Bengalis. Cependant, il était très conscient d'une anomalie dans la psychologie Hindoue. Il avait l'habitude de dire «Hindous ont peur des Musulmans et Hindous souffrent d'un complexe d'infériorité. Ils se souviennent constamment que les Musulmans les vaincus. Ils disent que l'un Musulman équivaut à trois Hindous.» Il croyait aussi que l'icône Hindou Swami Vivekananda manquait la capacité intellectuelle à saisir les enseignements du Lord Buddha. Il a rejeté la thèse de pure et simple Swami Vivekananda que les Bouddhistes introduit l'idolâtrie et les tantras. Il a écrit «Vivekananda était totalement faux. Hindouisme introduit l'idolâtrie et les tantras. Mantras peuvent être trouvés même dans les Vedas.» Il convient de mentionner que mon grand-père était farouchement opposé aux tantras qu'il rejeté comme un culte dégénéré.


L'attitude de mon grand-père vers l'Hindouisme bordé à l'hostile. Il célèbre refusé de manger des mains de toute Hindoue et employait un cuisinier Musulman pour cuisiner ses repas. Il a demandé à un homme Musulman d'enseigner l'Arabe et l'Ourdou à mon grand-père et ses frères et sœurs. En conséquence, mon grand-père est également devenu couramment l'Arabe et l'Ourdou.


Malheureusement pour notre famille, il est décédé avant 1947. Etiez-il vivant, il ne serait pas pris la décision de migrer vers Kolkata sur l'impulsion du moment. Il ne fut pas un homme à prendre des décisions irréfléchies. Doué d'une pénétrante intuition, un sens aigu de la justice, le niveau de tête et possédant une vision optimiste et inclusive de l'avenir de l'humanité, mon grand-père aurait pu prévoir que le Pakistan oriental devait durer seulement 24 ans.


Mon grand-père, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, était un combattant de la liberté qui a été emprisonné par les Britanniques avant son examen d'immatriculation. Il a écrit son examen en prison. Il a été torturé par les Britanniques à chaque fois qu'il a été emprisonné par eux. Formé sous Rabindranath Tagore à Santiniketan, il est venu sous l'influence du Mahatma Gandhi qu'il a rencontré à plusieurs reprises. Il a pris mon père, un jeune garçon à l'époque, pour rencontrer Mahatma Gandhi à Barrackpore dans la banlieue nord de Kolkata où Mahatma Gandhi a été il résidait. Mon père a rappelé que quand il se pencha pour payer ses respects à Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi a mis sa main sur la tête de mon père et dit en hindi «Beta, sachcha patriot bano » qui signifie « Fils, être un vrai patriote.»


Mon grand-père a fondé la House of Labour dans le East Bengal pour encourager les jeunes vers les entreprises et de l'entreprise. Être un homme d'affaires, mon grand-père a beaucoup voyagé à toutes les parties de l'Inde indivise sur les entreprises. Il est resté à Lahore pendant deux ans. Il a également visité Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi et Hyderabad dans le Sind. Mon père a rappelé que, comme un jeune garçon, mon grand-père l'a emmené à Jammu via Sialkot, la voie normale en ces temps. Il ne pouvait pas avoir échappé à mon grand-père que la fracture linguistique entre Musulmans Bengalis et les non-Musulmans Bengalis était trop grand pour être comblé comme Musulmans Bengalis considérés Bengali être leur langue maternelle et les non-Musulmans Bengalis considérés Ourdou comme leur langue maternelle. Ce fait même conduirait à l'éclatement du Pakistan, avec une victoire Indienne, en 1971.


Étonnamment, mon grand-père a omis de tenir compte de la différence linguistique entre Musulmans Bengalis et les non-Musulmans Bengalis dans sa prédiction de l'avenir du sous-continent Indien. Il n'a pas réussi à se rendre compte que toute alliance entre les Musulmans Bengalis et les non-Musulmans Bengalis devait être temporaire dans la nature et que la scission était inévitable tôt ou tard. Pour un homme de voyager dans toute l'Inde et de ne pas développer un jugement incisif de la situation était vraiment extraordinaire. Agissant impulsivement, en 1947, il a pris une décision d'abandonner le East Bengal et de venir à Kolkata en laissant tous ses biens à East Bengal derrière. Il est venu à Kolkata en tant que réfugié et comme un pauvre. Cela a causé à ma famille de grandes difficultés à l'époque. Certes, la nature éphémère du Pakistan oriental aurait dû être évident pour tout observateur averti.


Peu après son arrivée à Kolkata en 1947, mon grand-père a réalisé qu'il avait été la poursuite d'un mirage. Fortement désabusé, il a rompu tous les liens avec la politique et avec le Indian National Congress. Insatisfait de la façon dont l'Inde indépendante allait, il sert à plusieurs reprises dire «Je commis une erreur historique en quittant East Bengal. Cela ne veut pas l'indépendance je me suis battu pour.»


En 1953, mon grand-père pourrait recueillir assez d'argent pour construire une maison dans le sud de Kolkata, mais son argent a été épuisé avant qu'il ne puisse terminer la construction. Il a été laissé à moi de terminer la construction de notre maison, mon père et ses oncles paternels avoir rien à ce que mon grand-père avait fait ajouté. Réalisant et reconnaissant que l'indépendance était une victoire à la pyrrhus pour lui, il a développé une maladie du cœur. Il est décédé en 1959 regrettant vivement sa décision hâtive de migrer vers Kolkata. Pakistan oriental devait durer seulement 12 années après sa mort en donnant naissance au Bangladesh.


Avec le recul, il est clair qu'il n'a pas été une décision correcte pour mon grand-père à migrer vers Kolkata. Il n'a pas seulement jeté l'héritage matériel de sa propriété à Chittagong, mais aussi l'héritage intellectuel de l'héritage de mon grand-père.


Mon père, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, aujourd'hui décédé, avait beaucoup le même genre de carrière que je vais avoir. Possédant plusieurs degrés, affiliations professionnelles, et un connaisseur des beaux-arts et de la littérature, il a beaucoup voyagé à travers le monde. Parmi ses nombreuses réalisations, le développement d'un institut de gestion se démarque. Un Rotarien jusqu'à sa mort, il a promu les beaux-arts en faisant plusieurs dons à des organismes méritants. Bien que mon père partageait pleinement les vues de mon grand-père en ce qui concerne l'état de l'Inde, il était trop tard pour lui de renverser l'erreur de mon grand-père.


Mon père était à Times Square à New York quand les nouvelles éclaté que Lee Harvey Oswald avait assassiné le président John F. Kennedy à Dallas. Il rappelle l'aspect hébété sur les visages des New Yorkais en recevant les nouvelles. «Une démocratie réussie a besoin d'une société alphabétisée - les personnes analphabètes ne peuvent pas faire des choix éclairés et considérés alors que le vote dit mon père plus tard. L'éradication de l'analphabétisme devrait être la principale préoccupation de l'Inde. A côté, la corruption, la criminalité et les malversations, notamment dans les bureaux du gouvernement, devrait être éradiquée. Pourquoi devrait-on avoir à payer des bribes à plusieurs personnes afin d'obtenir une nouvelle connexion de l'électricité pour sa maison nouvellement construite? Il est suffisant pour les besoins de l'homme, mais pas assez pour la cupidité de l'homme. Ce qui importe est pas ce que l'on a, mais ce que l'on est.» Bien que mon père était un Bouddhiste fervent, il a dû payer de l'argent d'extorsion pendant les fêtes Hindoues habitants de taudis qui vivent encore près de notre maison. Bien que ma maison est un quartier chic du sud de Kolkata, il y a un grand bidonville près de lui. Il est un triste commentaire sur l'état des choses que Kolkata est jonché de bidonvilles similaires partout. Les habitants des bidonvilles sont pour la plupart analphabètes et chômeurs et sont, naturellement, plein de vices. Le gouvernement n'a pas réussi à élever ces personnes et d'éradiquer les bidonvilles, même si des décennies se sont écoulées depuis l'indépendance.


Oncle Aziz était un ami très proche de mon père. Lui et mon père a rencontré aux Etats-Unis. Il avait son ascendance à Comilla. Il se fixa à Dhaka où il a construit une maison dans la région de Bonani. Il a visité notre maison à Kolkata plusieurs fois. Il avait l'habitude de visiter l'Inde souvent à des fins professionnelles et ne manquait jamais de tomber sur nous. J'ai également visité Dhaka pour présenter un exposé à une conférence internationale et a visité sa maison. A cette occasion, je me suis rendu sur toute la longueur et la largeur de Dhaka et a vu tout ce que Dhaka a à offrir. L'amitié entre mon père et Oncle Aziz percolé à nos familles élargies. Ma grand-mère, Premlata Bhattacharya, regarda Oncle Aziz comme son propre fils. Mes oncles paternels et leurs familles sont aussi devenus des amis proches de Oncle Aziz et de la famille et de sa famille élargie, en particulier l'un des frères de Oncle Aziz, qui était un médecin de renommée internationale. Le frère de Oncle Aziz et sa famille ont également visité notre maison à Kolkata.


À une occasion particulière, pendant le dîner à notre maison, Oncle Aziz a dit à mon père et mes oncles paternels «Pourquoi votre père venu à Kolkata en 1947? Notre pays est plus pauvre à cause de votre quitter. Beaucoup d'entre nous au Bangladesh se sentent de cette façon.»


Mon père a pris grand soin de voir que je devais l'exposition à toutes les religions. Quand j'avais cinq ans, il m'a admis à l'école Don Bosco de Kolkata géré par les missionnaires Catholiques où j'ai eu à étudier la Bible. Pendant les douze années que j'ai étudié dans cette école, certains aspects du Christianisme comme son monothéisme et son opposition à l'idolâtrie ont laissé une impression profonde, vivante, durable et permanente dans mon esprit. Quand j'avais neuf ans, mon père m'a emmené à Murshidabad, un événement qui est gravé dans mon esprit. A Murshidabad, il m'a emmené dans une Mosquée construite sur des centaines d'années. Il m'a montré tous les détails; les minarets, la calligraphie et ainsi de suite. Ce fut une visite mémorable pour moi.


À l'école Don Bosco et au cours de mes études supérieures, je suivais les traces de mes ancêtres, ramasser une excellente éducation et toutes les autres choses nécessaires pour être un homme complet.


Plus tard, dans ma carrière professionnelle, au milieu de mes voyages dans divers pays du monde couvrant presque tout le monde, je l'ai vu l'unité de l'homme. Les souvenirs se distinguent, parfois instiller un sentiment de déjà vu en moi; la vue sur le Pacifique à Singapour et sur les montagnes et moraines du sommet du mont Säntis en Suisse, le vol de l'Iran à trancher entre Téhéran au nord et à Qom au sud et à l'Arabie Saoudite et la Turquie, les Wats de Bangkok, Ahsan Manzil dans Dhaka, Dubai, au nord-ouest de la Jordanie, coucher de soleil à Hardwar, Brême et Berlin en Allemagne, Dilli Haat à Delhi et Marina Beach à Chennai.


Il est une vérité qui dérange que l'Inde indépendante a laissé tomber ses propres combattants de la liberté comme Mahatma Gandhi et mon grand-père. La plupart des gens en Inde semblent maintenant avoir une vision pervertie d'être d'avant-garde. Sacrifier les valeurs et les traditions chères à nos ancêtres, notre glorieux héritage est jeté aux vents. Parvenus ne peut pas attendre d'apprécier le truisme de Ich Dien. Culture ersatz prolifère avec le concept de la vie avec plaisir. La ruée pour lebensraum dégénère les gens à tomber en proie à la cupidité rampante. Ayant atteint son chemin l'indépendance en 1947, l'Inde n'a pas à devenir un pays développé. L'Inde est encore un pays en développement et un marché émergent. L'Inde est endémique à l'idolâtrie, la corruption, la criminalité et les malversations. En Inde, les riches deviennent plus riches et les pauvres deviennent plus pauvres. Le gouvernement n'a pas donné même les nécessités de base à tous les Indiens. Si le dicton, «justice différée est justice refusée» est d'être tenue comme valide, ma mère, Sheila Bhattacharya, qui est un chef retraité du Département d'Anglais d'un collège affilié à l'Université de Calcutta, a été refusée la justice comme elle a reçu sa retraite Cotisations quatre ans après avoir pris sa retraite. Parmi les nombreux pays que j'ai visités dans le monde, l'Inde est le seul pays que je connaisse où un employé du gouvernement a été menacé de mort par un collègue (qui est aussi un employé du gouvernement) et a été contraint de démissionner et le gouvernement a pas fait quoi que ce soit pour la victime. Ancré dans la corruption, les patrons immédiats de la victime (qui sont tous des employés du gouvernement) ont soutenu et continuent de soutenir le criminel qui arrive à avoir de l'argent-pouvoir considérable. La victime n'a pas encore reçu un seul paisa de même son propre argent sous la garde du gouvernement pendant ses années au service du gouvernement. Cet incident très récent présente une image honteuse de l'Inde devant le monde civilisé.


J'ai fondé la Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation pour élever les enfants des rues et des bidonvilles enfants de Kolkata.


Le Gouvernement de l'Inde doit faire le nettoyage à la suite sur le pied de guerre. Le Gouvernement de l'Inde doit


1. Racine des fonctionnaires du gouvernement ayant un casier judiciaire. Pour commencer, le gouvernement devrait rejeter et essayer Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya et Koustuv Debnath, qui sont tous employés comme professeurs à Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, et qui ont tous criminelle enregistrements.


2. Racine sur la corruption dans les bureaux du gouvernement. Seule une très petite fraction des fonctionnaires du gouvernement sont honnêtes.


3. Démolir la conception, répandue chez la plupart des Indiens, que le service du gouvernement implique le droit de prendre des pots de vin. Alors que punir les coupables, le gouvernement devrait glorifier la très petite minorité de fonctionnaires gouvernementaux qui sont honnêtes.


4. Faites un effort sérieux pour élever les villageois qui souffrent de l'Inde.


5. Faire des efforts sincères pour éliminer les taudis et les ghettos dans les villes indiennes.


6. Construire un gouvernement basé sur la confiance, et non pas les soupçons. Au moins quatre documents d'identité sont répandues en Inde aujourd'hui - Passeport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card et la carte d'identité de l'électeur. Depuis, à l'exception d'un passeport, un Indien n'a pas vraiment besoin du reste, le gouvernement devrait abolir les documents inutiles. Différents ensembles de fonctionnaires du gouvernement sont actuellement émettent différents documents d'identité et de prendre des pots de vin pour délivrer le même.


7. Reconnaître que le gréement généralisé a lieu dans les élections indiennes et faire des efforts sincères pour extirper-la même chose. Compte tenu du gréement largement répandue maintenant avec toughs locales au pouvoir des isoloirs, des résultats des élections indiennes sont dépourvues de tout rapport à la volonté du peuple.


8. Assurez-vous que le fils hérite de la propriété de son père. Cela ne se produit habituellement pas maintenant à moins que le fils paie des pots de vin lourdes aux fonctionnaires du gouvernement. Le gouvernement doit faire un peu d'introspection et avoir honte qu'un fils trouve actuellement de grandes difficultés à hériter des actions de son père et d'une connexion d'électricité - pour ne citer que deux exemples.


9. Éradiquer l'habitude actuelle des fonctionnaires du gouvernement qui prennent des pots de vin, par exemple, sanctionner un plan de construction, muter une propriété foncière et de fournir une connexion électrique.


10. Simplifier la procédure pour obtenir les passeports indiens. Les fonctionnaires du gouvernement dans les bureaux régionaux de passeport doivent être courtois et serviable et pas harceler les citoyens comme cela est le cas aujourd'hui.


11. Veiller à ce que les prestations de retraite sont libérés immédiatement après la retraite et non pas après quatre ou cinq ans. Beaucoup de gens obtiennent leurs prestations de retraite entre quatre et six ans après la retraite. Ma mère a reçu sa retraite profite quatre ans après sa retraite. Le gouvernement doit punir les fonctionnaires du gouvernement qui refusent les prestations de retraite des citoyens retraités.


12. Eliminez la féodalité. Fonctionnaires gouvernementaux corrompus ont pris la place de zamindars autrefois dans les zones rurales.


13. Eliminer l'économie actuelle «trickle-down». Le gouvernement doit veiller à ce que les couches inférieures de la société indienne est également bénéficiaire du progrès économique et ne sont pas laissés pour compte.


14. Retirer le criminel-gouvernement serviteur-politique nexus. Cela est extrêmement important si l'Inde est de progresser.


15. Retirer la différence entre «les dirigeants» et «gouvernés». Le gouvernement doit veiller à ce que la démocratie ne reste pas une imposture et que le gouvernement est vraiment «du peuple, pour le peuple et par le peuple».


16. Placez une plus grande valeur à la vie humaine. Le gouvernement ne doit pas penser que, simplement parce que l'Inde est un pays très peuplé, quelques vies perdues dans un accident, par exemple, un effondrement du pont - comme celui qui est arrivé dans Howrah quelque temps - n'a pas d'importance. Le gouvernement doit reconnaître que chaque vie humaine est précieuse.


17. Eliminez tokenism.


18. Éliminez window-dressing avant un politicien visite une région. Le gouvernement doit être sincère dans ses efforts de développement et de veiller à ce que pas un projet de développement unique annoncé se révèle être un collyre destiné à tromper la population.


19. Assurer l'accès à internet et l'alimentation continue dans les zones rurales. L'accès à internet en dehors des métropoles est pitoyable et les coupures de courant sont fréquentes. Hier soir, il y avait une panne de courant à mon bureau à Kolkata.


20. Soyez sensible à la souffrance du peuple. La longueur et la largeur de Kolkata est inondé pendant la saison de la mousson et aucun régime n'a rien fait à ce sujet.


21. Comprendre que des slogans tels que «Bekari hatao» et «Roti, kapra aur makaan» sont inutiles si elles restent de simples slogans sans aucune tentative de les mettre en œuvre. Le gouvernement doit veiller à ce que les besoins fondamentaux du peuple sont remplies.