India
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: [email protected] 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. 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 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 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.
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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: [email protected] 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 ne doit pas rester un spectateur indifférent au sort de ceux qui souffrent. Le nettoyage-up que l'Inde doit faire sur un pied de guerre II
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: [email protected] 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. The Cleaning-up that India has to do on a War-footing II
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: [email protected] 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. An Indifferent Spectator
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: [email protected] 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. 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 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 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 must not remain an indifferent spectator to the plight of the suffering people. Le nettoyage-up que l'Inde doit faire sur un pied de guerre
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: [email protected] 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. The Cleaning-up that India has to do on a War-footing
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: [email protected] 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. MultiSpectra Edge
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: [email protected] MultiSpectra Edge is an integrated programme offered by MultiSpectra Consultants for students at all levels. It is designed so as to give participating students an Edge over their competitors. A brief outline of MultiSpectra Edge is given below. MultiSpectra Edge AT THE 10 AND 10+2 LEVELS MultiSpectra Consultants offers an in-depth career guidance and advice at both the 10 and 10+2 levels including, but not limited to, guidance and advice pertaining to examinations and tests typically faced by students at these levels. It also seeks to make available modules of advanced knowledge available to students in both online and offline modes. MultiSpectra Edge AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL At the undergraduate level, MultiSpectra Consultants offers in-depth training, career guidance and advice in several ways including training in the form of Summer and Winter Internships and guidance and advice pertaining to examinations and tests typically faced by students at this level. The Summer and Winter Internships are offered in the area of Civil Engineering Research and Development with the standard output being published papers. All students who have participated in this programme so far have a large number of jointly-authored published papers to their credit. A certificate is also given. Recognising that Mathematics and Geology students can also fruitfully contribute to some areas of Civil Engineering Research and Development, MultiSpectra Consultants has extended its Summer and Winter Internships to Mathematics and Geology students. Students can also work at their parent institution under the Joint Supervision of MultiSpectra Consultants on a topic of interest to MultiSpectra Consultants. If successful, students get a certificate from MultiSpectra Consultants. MultiSpectra Edge AT THE POST-GRADUATE AND RESEARCH LEVELS At the post-graduate and research levels, MultiSpectra Consultants offers a programme for students to work at their parent institution under the Joint Supervision of MultiSpectra Consultants on a topic of interest to MultiSpectra Consultants. If successful, students get a certificate from MultiSpectra Consultants. MultiSpectra Consultants is also developing an online platform for Civil Engineers and Architects to interact in view of the fact that such a platform does not exist so far and is necessary and will have considerable market traction if the success of healthcare, property, e-commerce, travel and hospitality online platforms is any indication. Students at all levels are welcome to participate in the building of the platform. Needless to say, if students make a meaningful contribution, students get a certificate from MultiSpectra Consultants. Students may apply for MultiSpectra Edge by e-mailing me at [email protected] attaching their current CV to the e-mail. Placing India
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, MITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: [email protected] 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. I belong to an Indian Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. 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 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 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 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. An Inconvenient Truth
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, MITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: [email protected] I belong to an Indian Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. 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 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. 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 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 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. A Historic Blunder?
The Dark Aftermath of my Grandfather's Migration to Kolkata from East Bengal 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, MITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: [email protected] My impetus for writing this article came when Dr Sudhir Jain who is the director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the state of India at this moment. I decided to put some facts straight and write without the hype that certain misguided Indians indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, I decided to make some facts available to the public. I belong to an Indian Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. 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 practicing 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 Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. 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 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 posessing 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. 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.' Independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like my grandfather. 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 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 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. BUDDHISM : FUNDAMENTALS OF A WORLD FAITH
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: [email protected] SECTION 1. INTRODUCTION I am writing this article as a devout Buddhist and a very orthodox Dharmic man; immediately after a pilgrimage to Buddha Gaya. I am also writing this with a scientific and rationalistic approach No allegory is used in this article; none is needed. Lord Buddha is the focus of this article, and the entire article revolves around Him. I am striving to present the essence of Dharma ( Dharma-Dhatu ) in my own way. Although my family has its ancestral roots in Chittagong ( Chattagram – in Bengali ), Bangladesh and, naturally, follows Theravada Buddhism, I am trying to be as comprehensive as possible in my exposition of the Dharma. Sanskrit has been used as the default classical language of this article. Pali has also been extensively used and Chinese, Japanese and Korean have been used, where appropriate. Diacritical marks have been omitted as some knowledge of Sanskrit and Pali on the part of the reader is assumed. Buddhism, a major world faith, was founded by Lord Buddha in India over two thousand five hundred years ago. It has spread peacefully over much of Asia and has millions of adherents in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, China ( including Tibet ), Taiwan, Mongolia, North and South Korea, Japan, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and also in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. The northern extremity of Buddhism in Asia is the Ivolga Monastery in Siberia, Russia. This article is an exposition of Buddhism and in it, the word “faith” is used as a synonym of the word “religion”. Buddhism is also called Saddharma ( the true faith ) or Dharma. A major point is in order here. In religion, as in science, whatever can be proved must be accepted as true; conversely, whatever cannot be proved must be discarded as pure speculation. The sublimity of Buddhism lies in the fact that it has a very scientific approach. The universe is in a constant state of flux. When I look up at the night sky, I am looking backwards in time because light has a finite speed however great that speed may be. Moreover, I cannot see the extremities of the universe and logic tells me that the universe cannot have a spatial extremity. Similarly, the universe cannot have a zero-time extremity. Modern science recognises time as the fourth dimension in addition to the three spatial dimensions and also emphasises the variability of everything in the universe with respect to time. Man lives in a space-time framework, that is, within a temporal-spatial structure. Buddhism presents the correct scientific position that the universe has evolved and that it functions according to natural laws. SECTION 2. LIFE OF LORD BUDDHA Too well known to be repeated here, the life of Lord Buddha ( 563-483 B.C.E. ) is a story of the life of one of the greatest human beings who ever lived. His father was King Suddhodana, king of the Shakya kingdom whose capital was at Kapilavastu ( Kapilavatthu – in Pali ) and His mother was Queen Mayadevi. At the age of twenty-nine, Prince Siddhartha Gautama ( Prince Siddhattha Gotama – in Pali ) left home and after six years of ceaseless striving and meditation attained His Nirvana or Enlightenment at Uruvilva ( Uruvela – in Pali ), now called Buddha Gaya. Lord Buddha ( Buddha is translated as Fo in Chinese and as Butsu in Japanese; hence Daibutsu is Japanese for Great Buddha ) is also called Shakyamuni Buddha. Followers of the Vajrayana school of Mahayana Buddhism call Him Sarvarthasiddha, and, sometimes Shakyasimha or Munendra. Lord Buddha is also referred to as Narasimha, a very common Indian devotional appelation, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, a Mahayana Sutra. I also identify Him as Amitabha ( He who is of Boundless Light ) and Amitayus ( He who is of Immeasurable Life ). He is also identified as Bhaishajyaguru, that is, the compassionate doctor for the ills of the world. Lord is translated as Bhargava in Sanskrit and Bhagava in Pali. SECTION 3. PHILOSOPHY OF BUDDHISM The Sanskrit word “Dharma” literally means “Property”. For example, one says that the Dharma of fire is to burn. This means that the property of fire is to burn. The fire cannot be separated from its capacity to burn. Similarly, the literal meaning of Dharma ( Dhamma – in Pali, Fa – in Chinese, Ho – in Japanese ) of man is the basic property of man from which he cannot be separated. This means the spirituality inherent in man. The objective of Buddhism is Nirvana ( liberation, Nibbana – in Pali, Gedatsu – in Japanese ) and Bodhi ( Enlightenment, P'u-ti – in Chinese, Bodai – in Japanese ). The word Buddhi means intellect and the word Bodha means to understand; it is from these words that the word Bodhi is derived. Who is it that seeks Nirvana, Bodhi, and to understand? It is “I” ( Aham ), who is writing right now. Understanding sharpens me, refines me, contextualises me, and keeps me on the path to Bodhi and Nirvana. I shall have an opportunity to delve deeply into the issue of “I” in Buddhism later. Deep understanding ( Anubodha ) is the context of Bodhi, and Nirvana. Rephrasing Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism, Shunyata ( emptiness, Sunnata – in Pali, K'ung – in Chinese, Ku – in Japanese ) is the absence of ignorance. Avidya Paramam Malam ( Avijja Paramam Malam – in Pali, Ignorance is the greatest impurity ) is what Lord Buddha said. Nagarjuna can be further re-interpreted to give to me the understanding that Nirvana is not only available for a man in Samsara ( empirical and phenomenal world ) but, as I am immersed in Samsara, it is only possible within it, subject to the condition that the Arya Ashtanga Marga ( Noble Eightfold Path ) is rigorously followed. The conclusion Nagarjuna reached, in his seminal work Mula Madhyamika Karika, is that all things lack a fixed essence ( Swabhava, Sabhava – in Pali, Zi-xing – in Chinese ) or a fixed individual character (Swalakshana ) and that is why they are amenable to change. In other words, change is possible only if entities are devoid or empty ( Shunya ) of Swabhava. Buddhism has two main branches, Theravada and Mahayana, the difference between the two will be explained in due course. Man's quest for an end to his suffering ( Duhkha, Dukkha – in Pali ) has led him into an exploration of his inner self ( Wo – in Chinese ), 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 ( Chitta, Manas, Hsin or Xin – in Chinese, Kokoro – in Japanese ). This process, involving the destruction of suffering, is based on the Four Noble Truths ( Chaturaryasatya, Chattari Aryasachchani – in Pali ) enunciated by Lord Buddha which are as follows: Life contains suffering. ( Duhkha-Aryasatya, Dukkha-Aryasachcha – in Pali ) Suffering has a cause, and the cause can be known. ( Duhkha Samudaya-Aryasatya, Dukkha Samudaya-Aryasachcha – in Pali ) Suffering can be brought to an end. ( Duhkha Nirodha-Aryasatya, Dukkha Nirodha-Aryasachcha – in Pali ) The path to end suffering has eight parts. ( Marga-Aryasatya, Magga-Aryasachcha – in Pali ) Lord Buddha also laid out the Noble Eightfold Path ( Arya Ashtanga Marga, Arya Atthangika Magga – in Pali ). The Noble Eightfold Path is given below: Right view ( Samyak Dristi, Samma Ditthi – in Pali) Right intention ( Samyak Sankalpa, Samma Sankappa – in Pali) ) Right speech ( Samyak Vakya, Samma Vacha – in Pali) ) Right action ( Samyak Karma, Samma Kammanta – in Pali) ) Right livelihood ( Samyak Jivika, Samma Ajiva – in Pali) ) Right effort ( Samyak Vyayama, Samma Vayama – in Pali) ) Right mindfulness ( Samyak Smriti, Samma Sati – in Pali) ) Right concentration ( Samyak Samadhi, Samma Samadhi – in Pali) ) This Path is also known as The Middle Path ( Madhyama Pratipada, Majjhima Patipada – in Pali ) because it is neither too easy nor too difficult. The first five parts of the Path involve maintaining a lifestyle full of virtue ( Shila, Sila – in Pali ) while the last three pertain to the practice ( Patipatti – in Pali ) of meditation. The Path is called The Way ( Tao – in Chinese, Do, Michi – in Japanese ) in the Far East. The practice of meditation lies at the heart of the spiritual practice of Dharmic ( spiritual ) people. To be a Buddhist means to distinguish between Buddhist and non-Buddhist acts, between ignorance and Enlightenment, between Samsara and Nirvana. Pancha Shila is for householders; Ashta Shila is for householders practising Brahmacharya, that is celibacy; and Dasha Shila is for monks. Named Siddhartha which means “one who has accomplished his task”, by His parents when He was born, Lord Buddha claimed that He was a human being, pure and simple. He claimed that whatever He had were human qualities. He always denied that He was divine or that He was divinely-inspired. Yet he was divinity personified. His family name was Gautama. Lord Buddha referred to Himself as the Tathagata ( literally, One who has come to Truth, that is, One who has discovered Truth ). The word Tathagata is translated as Ru-lai in Chinese and as Nyorai in Japanese. Lord Buddha expoused Anatmata or Nairatmya ( Anatta – in Pali, Muga – in Japanese ). The Sanskrit word “Atman”, the Pali word “Atta” and the Chinese word “Shen” mean Soul. In its most fundamental sense, Nairatmya implies selflessness which has its external manifestion in selfless action in order to benefit others. The wisdom gained by experience ( Bhavana-maya Pragya, Bhavana-maya Panna – in Pali ) is that Atman is not found even in the deepest meditative experience, that is, during Samadhi. Further, subscription to a belief in Atman resuls in egoism ( Ahamkara ) and attachment towards mundane things ( Mamakara ). Lord Buddha's first sermon, at Rishipatana ( Isipatana – in Pali ) near Varanasi, is called the Dharmachakrapravartana Sutra ( Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta – in Pali ) and His second sermon ( Sutra, Sutta – in Pali, Ching – in Chinese, Kyo – in Japanese, Gyong – in Korean ), delivered five days later, also at Rishipatana ( modern Sarnath ), is called the Anatmalakshana Sutra ( Anattalakkhana Sutta – in Pali ). Lord Buddha said, in the beginning of the Anatmalakshana Sutra, “Rupam Anatma, Vedana Anatma, Sangya Anatma, Samskara Anatma, Vigyana Anatma” ( Rupam Anatta, Vedana Anatta, Sanna Anatta, Sankhara Anatta, Vinnana Anatta – in Pali, Material Form is not the Soul, Sensation is not the Soul, Perception is not the Soul, Pre-disposition is not the Soul, Consciousness is not the Soul.). In the course of yet another sermon, at Shravasti, Lord Buddha said “ There is an unborn, unchanging, uncreated, and unconditioned. If there were not, this that which is unborn, unchanging, uncreated, and unconditioned, there could not be any escape from what is born, changing, created, and conditioned. But since there is an unborn, unchanging, uncreated, and unconditioned, there is an escape from what is born, changing, created and conditioned. ”. With these words, Lord Buddha pointed His finger towards the Paramartha-Satya ( ultimate truth ), which is Nirvana. At another point, Lord Buddha mentioned that one kind of desire is desire for existence ( Bhava-Trishna ). In the Dhammapada, it is said that “ Sarva Dharma Anatma. ”, that is all entities are without own-being. It must be kept in mind that Lord Buddha's attitude was practical and His primary concern was the salvation of suffering human beings. His silence in response to speculative metaphysical questions indicated His transcendental spirit; that of rising to a plane above lesser beings. According to Lord Buddha, man is his own master. “Atta hi attano natho” are the exact words of Lord Buddha. He also said “Atmadvipa viharatha, atmasharana ananyasharana” meaning “Dwell making yourself your island ( that is refuge ), and not anyone else as your refuge”. Man 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 ( Mohagrasta ), 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. Man lives in illusions ( Moha ); the illusion that he will never fall sick, the illusion that no harm will ever befall him. 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. When a man suffers, the world seems to collapse around him. 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 ends 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. Lord Buddha's title means one who is awake. He is the messiah who showed the path to eternity. Lord Buddha gave His teaching “for the good of many, for the happiness of many, for showing compassion to the world” ( Bahujanahitaya, Bahujanasukhaya, Lokanukampaya ). 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 is already in man, he just has to use it. In the Dharmachakrapravartana Sutra, Lord Buddha said that Nirvana is not subject to grief, defilement ( Klesha, Kilesa – in Pali, Bonno - in Japanese ), disease ( Vyadhi ), decay ( Jara ), and death ( Mrityu, Marana ). In other words, Nirvana is beyond cause and effect, that is, it transcends conditioned phenomena. Lord Buddha also said “Nirvanam Paramam Sukham”. Nirvana is Apratitya-samutpanna and Asamskrita ( unconditioned, Apatichcha-samuppanna and Asankhata – in Pali, Wu-yin – in Chinese ) and, according to Vasubandhu of the Yogachara ( the practice of Yoga ) school of Mahayana Buddhism, is the Parinishpanna Swabhava ( true self-nature of Being, Zhen-shi-xing – in Chinese ). It is interesting to note that in the Lankavatara Sutra, a Mahayana Sutra associated with the Yogachara school, Nirvana is described as the seeing of everything as it is. Nirvana is a positive Absolute and is Nitya ( without beginning and end, Nicca – in Pali ). Nirvana means a state of Mukti ( Mutti – in Pali )which means freedom or Vimukti ( Vimutti – in Pali ) which means absolute freedom. Nirvana also denotes Satya ( Sacca – in Pali ) which means Truth and Shanti ( Santi – in Pali ) which means Peace. A synonym for Nirvana is Moksha ( liberation, Mokkha – in Pali ). Nirvana is a state of absolute perfection. Shariputra, the famous historical disciple of Lord Buddha, described Nirvana as the extinction of desire, hatred and illusion. In mystical language, Nirvana is the experience of standing face-to-face with Reality ( Shi – in Chinese ). Nirvana is equated with Bodhi and is the Paramartha-Satya. Nirvana is sometimes expressed as negative of negative such as the cessation of suffering, of craving, of aversion, etc. This need not result in any confusion. In Sanskrit, sometimes positive things are expressed as negatives of negatives as the word “Arogya” which means recuperation from illness and the word “Amrita” which means immortal. Further, as mathematics proves, negative of negative is always positive. Nirvana is a freeing from the chains of a false sense of individuality. Nirvana is a state of non-duality ( Advaita or Advaya ); a state where the illusion of a false sense of “I” ( Parikalpita Swabhava, Fen-bie-xing – in Chinese ) does not exist. Expressed differently, liberation from the illusion of separateness of the individual Self from the Whole is Nirvana. FREEDOM IS, NIRVANA IS, TRUTH IS. According to Buddhism, everything is relative and impermanent ( Anitya, Anicca – in Pali ) in the empirical, conditioned world. Lord Buddha told Rashtrapala “The world is in continuous flux and is impermanent”. In this context, I can correctly say that one cannot step twice into the same river because although I may continue to see the same river externally from a gross point of view, the water molecules I am seeing at a particular location at any moment are different from the water molecules the moment before and the moment after. One thing disappears, conditioning the appearance of the next in a series of cause and effect. Everything is in a state of becoming something else the next moment. A wheel cannot be separated from its movement. There is no static wheel “behind” the wheel in motion. Things change over time. Everything originates dependent on other factors. That is, all things come into existence as the result ( Phala ) of an interaction of various causes ( Hetu ). Each entity is Pratitya-samutpanna ( conditioned, Patichcha-samuppanna – in Pali ) as well as Pratitya-samutpada ( conditioning, Patichcha-samuppada – in Pali ). The Law of Dependent Origination is central to Buddhism. For example, anger cannot arise by itself without a cause. The five aggregates, Rupa, Vedana, Sangya, Samskara and Vigyana, all of which are identified as Anatma ( non-Soul ) by Lord Buddha in the Anatmalakshana Sutra, are called the Pancha Skandha ( the five aggregates, Pancha Khandha – in Pali ). Sensations ( Vedana ) of the physical world of forms ( Rupa ) are received by the five physical sense organs ( Indriya ) such as the nose. The mind feels the mental world. The five physical sense organs and the mind are called the six sensory bases. Sensations lead to perceptions ( Sangya, Sanna – in Pali ), which in turn lead through pre-dispositions ( Samskara, Sankhara – in Pali ), to consciousness ( Vigyana, Vinnana – in Pali ). In the Yogachara school of Mahayana Buddhism, the concept of Alaya-Vigyana ( literally, the abode of consciousness, but commonly translated as store-consciousness ) is introduced. The Alaya-Vigyana ( Ariyashiki – in Japanese ), which maintains the continuum of consciousness, is the mind; hence this school is also called the Chittamatratavada school. Other names of the same school are Agamanuyayi Vigyanavada and Vigyaptimatratavada. The fundamental concept of the Yogachara ( Wei Shi – in Chinese, Yuishiki – in Japanese ) school may be expressed by the proposition that the Parinishpanna Swabhava is realised when man pierces ( Patibheda ) through his Parikalpita Swabhava and Paratantra Swabhava ( conditioned self-nature, Yi-ta-xing – in Chinese ). The Alaya-Vigyana, as conceived in Mahayana Buddhism, is a permanent entity. The Alaya-Vigyana contains all impressions of past actions and all future potentialities. It is also the Tathagatagarbha ( Buddha-Matrix, Ru-lai-zang – in Chinese, Nyoraizo – in Japanese ), the basis on which a man can become a Buddha. So, latent in every man is a Buddha-like faculty called Buddha-Dhatu ( Buddha-Nature, Fo-hsing or Fo-xing – in Chinese ). Right meditation leads to spiritual Enlightenment, which is nothing but the full manifestation of the Buddha-Dhatu ( or Tathagata-Dhatu ) in man. Thus, any man can develop himself through appropriate practice, that is meditation, and become a Buddha. Anyway, for an average man, the summation of all physical and mental processes, processes in constant flux, is perceived empirically as “I”. The empirical “I” is ephemeral and impermanent, and is Samvriti-Satya ( conventional truth ). Conscious of something, one reacts mentally. The mental reactions are of two types : craving and aversion. Craving ( Trishna, Tanha – in Pali, Raga – in Sanskrit and Pali ) and aversion ( Dvesha, Dosa – in Pali ) both lead to suffering; it is self-evident that aversion results in suffering and craving results in suffering because if the object of craving remains out of reach, there is suffering. Thus, ultimately, whatever is impermanent is Duhkha or suffering. Trishna Nirodha, Upadana ( clinging ) Nirodha. The renowned sage Buddhaghosa, the writer of the Visuddhimagga ( Vishuddhi Marga, The Path of Purification ), has dwelt elaborately on suffering. Taking the lead from Nagarjuna, I posit that Duhkha is transient; it arises dependent on something else and also decays into extinction. Duhkha is not self-determining; its existence and character are attributable to factors that condition its origin and subsequent transformation. Coming into existence and dying out of existence, Duhkha lacks any trace of permanence.Thus, it may be said that Duhkha lacks a Swabhava or Swalakshana and is characterised by Nihswabhava ( absence of Self-Nature ). Thus Duhkha is empty ( Shunya ). I am, therefore, led to formulate the proposition: Duhkhameva Shunyam. Because Duhkha is ephemeral, I can expand the Sanskrit sentence to this: Duhkhameva Anityam evam Shunyam The perception of the emptiness of Duhkha allows one to let go of Duhkha and thus be released of the hold that Duhkha has on him. This is, of course, intended as a Mahayana Buddhist theoretical complement to Vipashyana meditation and is in no way a substitute for Vipashyana meditation. I also hold that the notion of Buddha-Dhatu is a very productive concept. Any meditator's meditation is bound to become better if he remembers during meditating that he has Buddha-Dhatu in him. The concept of Satyadvaya or two categories of truth, Samvriti-Satya ( Sammuti-Sacca – in Pali ) and Paramartha-Satya ( Paramattha-Sacca – in Pali ), is an essential element of Buddhism. The word “Samvrita” literally means “covered”. The Mahayana Sutralankara, written by Asanga, says that a Pudgala ( person ) exists in Pragyapti ( designation ) ( this is Samvriti-Satya ) but not in Dravya ( substance ). Asanga's lead is followed throughout this article where the Samvriti-Satya of the empirical man is considered in the context of Anatmata or Nairatmya. In response to questioning by devotees in the kingdom of Kosala as to the importance or unimportance of belief, Lord 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 ( Gyana ). Freedom of thought is permitted by Lord Buddha to His devotees so that they can discriminate and find Truth. Nirvana cannot be had via someone else's knowledge. A contemporary scholar Kazuaki Tanahashi describes an incident in Japan where a Buddhist monk illustrated to his disciples the power of what might be called “positive emptiness” in the mind. A void in the mind can be filled with spirituality by virtue of positive thinking. A Korean monk, Kyong Ho, echoed this feeling when he advised one to accept the anxieties and difficulties of this life. He also advised people to use their will to bring peace between peoples. This is particularly relevant in the modern world where democracy and egalitarianism are taken for granted. The great Japanese Zen Buddhist monk Dogen said that Samadhi ( which is a transcendental state of mind ) led to Enlightenment of those who found Enlightenment in India and China. The Indian savant and Nobel Laureate in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore venerated Lord Buddha above all other great spiritual leaders and wrote in Bengali ( which is derived from Sanskrit through Pali ) several articles on Lord Buddha. John Blofeld, an ardent Buddhist, has the following advice for the laity “Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them”. Buddhism also strongly believes in the theory ( Pariyapti, Pariyatti – in Pali ) of Karma ( as you sow, so shall you reap ) and in the concept of rebirth. Lord Buddha said “Monks, I say that volition is action. Having thought, one acts through body, speech and mind.” ( Chetana 'ham bhikkhave kammam vadami. Chetayitva kammam karoti kayena vachaya manasa. – in Pali ). There are two types of Karma, Kushala Karma ( Kusala Kamma – in Pali ) or good actions and Akushala Karma or bad actions. Kushala Karma is Dharmic while Akushala Karma is Adharmic. The result of both types of Karma are called Karma Phala, which correspond to the type of Karma performed. SECTION 4. MEDITATION IN BUDDHISM He searched, He meditated, He found: this aptly summarises the awakening of Lord 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. Lord Buddha realised this fact and after His awakening taught the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Meditation is one form of mental culture ( Bhavana ). In meditation, what is required of man is to effect a radical shift in consciousness from the finite to the infinite using right concentration. Concentration is called Chittaikagrata in Sanskrit ( Chittekaggata – in Pali ). The concentrated focus is always on the elimination of suffering. 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 becomes awakened; Prabuddha. Lord Buddha did not give the Dharma 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. An explanation as to the types of meditation in vogue is in order here. Vipashyana ( Vipassana – in Pali, Kuan or Guan – in Chinese, Kan – in Japanese ) or Vidarshana ( Pashyana or Darshana means to see in an ordinary way; Vipashyana or Vidarshana means to see in a special way, that is, with Insight ) meditation is practised in south Asia and other countries which practice Theravada ( meaning, the way of the Elders ) Buddhism. Lord Buddha presented the technique of Vipashyana meditation in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta ( Mahasmritipratishthana Sutra ) / Satipatthana Sutta ( Smritipratishthana Sutra ). Lord Buddha delivered this Sutra in Kammassadhammam near Delhi. The Mahasatipatthana Sutta is found in the Digha ( Dirgha ) Nikaya and the Satipatthana Sutta is found in the Majjhima ( Madhyama ) Nikaya. Zen Buddhist practice is performed in East Asia, that is, in China, North and South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, which are among the countries that practice Mahayana ( meaning, the great vehicle ) Buddhism . In fact, Zen is one of the eight schools of Mahayana Buddhism. 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, literally meaning “the posture that gives happiness” ). Padmasana is also called Dhyanasana in the Vajrayana ( meaning, the thunderbolt vehicle ) school of Mahayana Buddhism. 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 ( Inzo – in Japanese ) in which I find so many statues of Lord Buddha. Bhumisparsha literally means “ touching the ground”. This gesture is also called Sakshi ( Sanskrit for witness ) Mudra. Alternatively, a man's hands may be in the cosmic Mudra with the left hand on top of the right, middle joints of middle fingers together and the thumbs touching each other. The hands should be held against the body, with the thumbs at about the height of the navel. This gesture is very popular in East Asia. The Samadhi Mudra consists of the right hand placed on top of the left hand with the tips of the two thumbs touching each other. 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 Gyana Mudra. After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and focus on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath ( Anapana-smriti or Anapana-sati ). Anapana ( An-pan – in Chinese ) means respiration. There must be no tampering with the natural respiration, a meditator's job is simply to focus his attention on his nostrils and observe the natural flow of breath. Respiration is natural, one has no craving or aversion towards it, it is always in the present ( Nitya ) and, since one breathes from the moment of one's birth to the moment of one's death, it is in fact a convergence of the past, present and future. Further, it is within the physical framework of the body. Respiration is thus an appropriate object for concentrating the mind, something that is not too easy. The mind does not usually want to stay in the present moment; it resides either in the past or in the future. A little effort is needed to prevent the mind from wandering about. This is called Right Effort. At this stage, there may be strong distractions in the mind that prevent the mind from concentrating. Sometimes these distractions appear to be overwhelming. The effort to focus on respiration should be continued in such cases. The key is never to give up. A learner soon discovers one thing ; meditation is hard work for a beginner. Right Mindfulness, which is mindfulness of breathing, follows Right Effort immediately. Right Concentration leading to Samadhi ( San-mei – in Chinese, Sanmai, Zanmai – in Japanese ), which is a transcendental state, follows. It may be described by Sat ( being ), Chit ( consciousness ) and Ananda ( bliss, happiness ). Sometimes, in lifting the mind to Samadhi, hurdles appear in the form of distractions in the mind. These distractions may be latent feelings of anger, craving, sadness, and so on. The remedy, in such cases, is to return back to Anapana-sati and try to lift the mind to Samadhi again. In Vipashyana meditation, he must then enter into Vipashyana. There are four parts to the practice. Kaya anupashyana, Vedana anupashyana, Chitta anupashyana, and Dharma anupashyana. Anupashyana means to see minutely, that is, to scrutinise Here, Dharma indicates the contents of the mind ( Chaitasika, Chetasika – in Pali ). Each of the the four, Kaya ( body ), Vedana ( sensations ), Chitta ( mind ) and Dharma ( mental contents ), must be subjected to Anupashyana. The true nature of all four of these reveal themselves to the meditator and he is able to remove defilement from the innermost recesses of his mind ( Anushaya, Anusaya – in Pali ). Awareness and equanimity ( Upeksha, Upekkha – in Pali ), together, symbolise Vipashyana meditation. If either part is missing, one cannot attain Enlightenment. Vipashyana leads to clear insight into the physical and mental structure and thus leads to Bodhi. The complete knowledge of my physical and mental structure is called Sampragyana ( Sampajanna – in Pali ), if I have it I am called a Sampragya. In some forms of Mahayana Buddhist meditation, meditation on Lord Buddha ( Buddhanupashyana ) is performed. Bodhyangas ( Bojjhangas – in Pali ) are factors contributing to Enlightenment. There are seven Bodhyangas: Smriti, Dharma-chayana, Virya ( courage ), Priti ( rapture and bliss ), Prashiddhi ( deep tranquility and calmness ), Samadhi, and Upeksha. The Four Sublime States ( Brahmavihara ) are Maitri, Karuna ( compassion ), Mudita and Upeksha. Meditation entails making a conscious and free choice to withdraw from the affairs of the mundane world to pursue spiritual ends; one of the objectives being the subsequent re-establishment of contact with the conditioned world as a purer and wiser man. The decision to meditate is itself an act of freedom. We have, in life, the freedom to pursue an ethical way of living. This freedom leads us to Bodhi and Nirvana and thus sets us free. Meditation is a pursuit of liberation, realisation is the end result. Post-realisation, one feels that 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 psychologically processing his external world undergoes a drastic change. He becomes more peaceful with himself and with others. An awakened man, possessing an Enlightened mind ( Bodhichitta ), 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 and tries to reduce their frequency and intensity. 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. 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. 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. 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 in their religion or culture, the philosophy and techniques of meditation are now spreading to the West from the East. SECTION 5. ZEN BUDDHISM Zen Buddhism originated in China and is in vogue in East Asia. As mentioned before, it is a school of Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism was propagated in China by Indian Buddhist monks like Kumarajiva ( 344-413 C.E. ), son of Kumarayana, who went to China in 401 C.E., and Buddhabhadra ( 359-429 C.E. ), who went to China in 408 C.E., and by Chinese Buddhist monks who came to India, like Fa-hsien ( or Fa-xian ), who came to India between 399 and 414 C.E., and Hsuan-tsang ( or Xuan-zang ) ( 600-664 C.E. ), who came to India between 629 and 645 C.E. Also, Gunabhadra translated the Lankavatara Sutra into Chinese and Paramartha was another noted translator. Mahayana Buddhism developed in India a few centuries after the Parinirvana of Lord Buddha. Emperor Kanishka convened the Fourth Buddhist Council, held probably at Jalandhar, in which the scholar Vasumitra was President and another eminent scholar Asvaghosha, the author of Buddha Charita, was Vice-President. In this assembly, Buddhists became divided into Mahayana Buddhists and Theravada Buddhists. The Pali word Thera is derived from the Sanskrit word Sthavira which means Elder. Theravada Buddhism is the most orthodox form of Buddhism and has preserved the historical teachings of Lord Buddha. The Theravada Sutras are the earliest available teachings of Lord Buddha, are originally in Pali, and are fully historical. The Pali Canon is called the Tripitaka in Sanskrit and the Tipitaka in Pali; Sutra-Pitaka, Vinaya-Pitaka and Abhidharma-Pitaka forming the three parts of the Tripitaka. Abhidharma means detailed philosophical discourses. Mahayana is a way of Buddhism followed widely across India and northern and eastern Asia. I have written before that in Mahayana Buddhism, individuals strive to take all others along with them to the ultimate goal of liberation. Mahayana Buddhism emerged in the context of the development of a different disposition towards Buddhism by some Buddhists; in terms of concepts relating to the Sangha, the Dharma and Lord Buddha. Firstly, schisms occurred on the level of “Sangha”. The primary concern of several venerated Buddhist monks was to keep the Dharma and discipline ( Vinaya ) pure. They felt that this was the only way to sustain Buddhism in the long run. These Buddhist monks became some of the most sophisticated theoreticians in the Indian intellectual world. Certain other monks wanted the Vinaya to be flexible. The case of the Mahasanghika monks is the best example to show the conflict between these two viewpoints. These monks had added ten minor precepts for their group , for example, monks could get, keep and use money. In the Second Buddhist Council, held at Vaishali, they were called “Papishtha bhikshus” (the sinful monks). Their behaviour was unacceptable from the viewpoint of the orthodox Buddhists. These monks established their own tradition and called themselves “Mahasanghikas” (The monks of the Great Sangha). Fissures also occurred on the level of “Dharma”. Three months before Lord Buddha’s Parinirvana at Kusinagara, He declared in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra that the monks and the laity would have the Dharma and the Vinaya as their leaders in the future. However, some Buddhists, mostly the Mahasanghikas, found themselves having no shelter left except the Dharma. So they searched for the true Dharma. The statement of Lord Buddha, “He who sees the Dharma, sees me; he who sees me, sees the Dharma”, also supported their quest. If one uses logical arguments to judge this sentence, an interesting question emerges. How must one see the Dharma so that one also sees Lord Buddha? For some Buddhist scholars, even today, Dharma is not merely the sermons of Lord Buddha. His life contains more latent implications, for example, the implications of His silence in certain contexts as in His silence in response to questions by Vacchagotra. Thus, for the Buddhist scholars alluded to above, Dharma is something more and wider than the speech of Lord Buddha. The sermons are merely a part of Him, not the totality. When I return back to the context of the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism, I find that the Buddhists referred to above had shifted the ethical facet of Buddhism to a metaphysical focus. And what they did was to seek out the truest Dharma; one which also revealed the status of Lord Buddha after His Parinirvana. Simultaneously, the assumption that Lord Buddha still existed pervaded and caught the faithful minds of Buddhists. Dharma turned out to be a means to reach the state of Buddhatva. If man realises the ultimate truth of all things, he is sure to free himself from all types of bondage. To see Dharma is to see the truth of phenomena. When the truth of phenomena is seen, the wisdom of Lord Buddha is fulfilled within oneself. That is the reason why when one sees the Dharma, he also sees Lord Buddha. Further, the state of the mind is linked to liberation. The state of liberation is conceived to be the same as the pure mind. A human mind, that is pure and detached from all types of impurities, is synonymous with the state of liberation. Also, there were groups that defined “Dharma” as the Ultimate Truth of Lord Buddha. The more these Buddhists investigated His life, the less they believed that He had gone away. Hence, to see Dharma is to see Lord Buddha’s power penetrating through all things. These groups also tended to relate Dharma to Lord Buddha’s great compassion ( Mahakaruna ) and felt that to see Dharma is to see the Buddha-Dhatu within oneself. Mahakaruna is Karuna ( compassion ) combined with Pragya ( wisdom, Panna – in Pali, Zhi Hui, Pan-jo, Po-jo – in Chinese, Hannya – in Japanese ). Clearly, the most important duty of man is to live and spend his life in accordance with Lord Buddha’s intention. As His intention was to liberate all sentient beings from suffering, in order to realise the Buddha-Dhatu within oneself, it is crucial that one has to assist other sentient beings and take them along on the way to liberation. Pragya is required, in fact it is vital, because different Upaya ( expedient means ) should be deployed to bring different sentient beings on the path to Bodhi. The notion of Bodhisattva sprang up from this attitude. Bodhisattvas are perfect in Dana ( charity ), Shila, Kshanti ( perseverence ), Virya, Dhyana and Pragya. Also, fault-lines occurred on the level of “Buddha”. When the Vinaya and the Dharma showed fault-lines, the only way out for unenlightened Buddhists was to go back to Lord Buddha as apart from Him, there is no other refuge. At that time, many Buddhists conceived the existence of Lord Buddha in the transcendental state. The Saddharma Pundarika Sutra ( or The Lotus Sutra ), a Mahayana Sutra, conceives of a transcendental Lord Buddha. Lord Buddha had returned to His universal form after His Parinirvana and He still existed. Lord Buddha had Three Bodies (Trikaya). The first and most fundamental body is called the Cosmic Body ( Dharmakaya, Hosshin – in Japanese ). The conceptualisation of Lord Buddha's All-Pervading, Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent and Radiant Dharmakaya provided for a more intense and immersive spiritual experience. The nature of the Dharmakaya is called Dharmakaya-Dhatu. When meditating, the state of Lord Buddha is the Blissful Body ( Sambhogakaya, Hojin – in Japanese ). The third body is the Constructed Body ( Nirmanakaya, Keshin – in Japanese ), which signifies the historical Lord Buddha. The Nirmanakaya of Lord Buddha had come and gone under the Will of the Dharmakaya. He was born to fulfil His human functions in leading human beings to liberation. It is believed that as long as humans do not realise the true Dharma, the anguish of departure from Lord Buddha takes place and that when the human mind is able to make a distinction between the pure mind and Klesha, the truism of Buddha-Dhatu becomes clear. In the conception of the Mahasanghikas, the concept of Rupakaya existed and Rupakaya was later split into Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya in Mahayana. Mahayana Buddhism combines the emotion of devotion ( Shraddha, Saddha – in Pali ) with the wisdom of logical reasoning. This is the appeal of Mahayana ( Ta-sheng – in Chinese, Daijo – in Japanese ) Buddhism. The similarities between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism are as follows: Lord Buddha is the original and historical founder of Buddhism. The Chaturaryasatya, Arya Ashtanga Marga, Pratitya-samutpada and the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination are the basic foundations of all schools of Buddhism. The training of Shila, Samadhi and Pragya is universal to all schools. The organisation of the Dharma is in three parts, namely Sutra, Vinaya ( Ritsu – in Japanese ) and Shastra ( Lun – in Chinese, Ron – in Japanese, Lon – in Korean ). The mind over matter concept is universal and the mind is the principal area of training and control. The primary devotional school of Mahayana Buddhism is the Pure Land School of the Far East, where the Sanskrit “Namah Amitabha Buddha” is translated into the Chinese “Namo Amito Fo” and the Japanese “Namu Amida Butsu”. The practice of invoking Lord Buddha's name is known as Buddhanusmriti ( Nien Fo – in Chinese, Nenbutsu – in Japanese ). Devotion is also directed towards the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra ( The Lotus Sutra ) with the invocation “Namo miao fa lien hua ching” in Chinese and “Namu myoho rengekyo” in Japanese. Reverting back to to Zen Buddhism, we find that although Zen Buddhist experts were found amongst the laity, Zen Buddhism's greatest geniuses were found in the highly regulated life of the monasteries. Zen Buddhism spread to Korea and Japan from China. In Japan, circular brushworks called enshos are calligraphic motifs often used in Zen Buddhism. In Zen Buddhist practice ( the Sanskrit word Dhyana is a synonym of the Pali word Jhana, the Chinese word Ch'an, the Vietnamese word Thien, the Korean word Son and the Japanese word Zen ), one can take the help of Koans ( Japanese, Kung-an – in Chinese, Kongan – in Korean ) or spiritual puzzles with the aid of which he can propel the mind to a transcendental state in which he can meditate. Zazen ( Japanese, Tso-ch'an – in Chinese, the practice of Zen Buddhist meditation ) leads to Enlightenment. At the usual existential level, Koans cannot be said to have any coherence and an existential leap is needed to bring harmony. 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 Buddhist 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 fundamental viewpoint of Zen Buddhism is that one is to point directly to one's mind, see it as it is ( Yatha Bhutam ) and become a Buddha. A very important difference between Theravada Buddhism and Zen Buddhism is that the former believes that Enlightenment is obtained slowly ( or gradually ) by means of practice while the latter is a believer in sudden Enlightenment ( Tun-yu – in Chinese ). I give below an example of a Koan: Before Enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water; After Enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. The meaning is self-explanatory. Bodhi does not change the Samsara I am immersed in but it does change and completely restructures my attitude towards that Samsara. 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.”. Once, Hui-hai Tai-chu came to the Zen master Ma-tsu Tao-i, the first of possibly the four greatest Chinese Zen masters. Ma-tsu asked him: “Why are you here searching when you already possess the treasure you are looking for?”. “What treasure?”, his interlocutor asked. Ma-tsu replied: “The one who is questioning me right now.”. Ma-tsu had an unswerving ability to bring the empirical “I” into focus at just the right moment. On another occasion, when asked, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from India?”, Ma-tsu replied with a classic answer: “What is the meaning of your asking this at precisely this moment?”. Ma-tsu followed the Hung-chou style of Zen. Ma-tsu Tao-i's disciple ( Dharma heir, Fa-ssu – in Chinese ) was Pai-chang Huai-hai. Pai-chang Huai-hai's disciple was Huang Po Hsi-yun whose disciple was Lin-chi I-hsuan, the founder of Rinzai Zen. Soto Zen is the other major form of Japanese Zen. SECTION 6. NON-ATTACHMENT, DISPASSION AND EGOLESSNESS Because contact of the six sensory bases with the external world do not result in any reactions in a liberated man, he is free. His mind is like a lamp that does not flicker. Non-attachment towards all beings and everything including the concepts of “I” and “Mine” is a characteristic of a liberated mind. The absence of ego in an Enlightened man leads him to adopt an attitude of dispassion and selflessness towards everything in his physical and mental world. He is virtuous. Temptations do not affect him. He is always cheerful, happy and optimistic. He radiates light wherever he goes. He is wise and compassionate ( Mahakarunika ) and does everything for the good of the world. He has risen above his previous mental conditioning ( Samskara ). He has risen above craving and aversion. SECTION 7. DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF BUDDHISM It must be remembered that in Buddhism, the only valid reason for waging a war is to fight evil forces. Any other war is unjust. Lord Buddha went to the field of battle and intervened to stop a war between the Shakyas and their neighbours and his words stopped King Ajatashatru of Magadha from attacking a neighbouring kingdom. Taking a life unjustly defiles a man. However, there is no sin in Buddhism, only delusion. Severely deluded men are unlikely to find cessation ( Nirodha, Nivritti ) from suffering ( Shoka, Soka – in Pali ) in this birth and the wheel of birth and death will roll on for them. Optimism is a virtue and is the natural state of man. Pessimism sometimes arises in him owing to his circumstances. Lord Buddha exuded optimism about humanity when he proclaimed “ Suffering can be brought to an end ”. A true follower of Lord Buddha has an optimistic attitude towards life and an ability to erase any pessimism that may arise in him. Buddhism discourages superstitious practices. Buddhism transformed the life of Emperor Ashoka of India. The greatest Indian Emperor ever, belonging to the Maurya dynasty, and 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. He also convened the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra ( modern Patna ) which was presided over by Maudgalyaputra Tishya. Emperor Kanishka of the Kushana 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. His capital was Purushapura ( modern Peshawar ). The next great Buddhist emperor of India was Emperor Harshavardhana. In India and China, legends surround Lord Buddha. A legend in India believes that the Hindu god of creation, Brahma, requested Lord Buddha to teach the Dharma. A legend in China says that a great Buddhist sage named Bodhidharma brought Buddhism from India to China. Another legend in China, recorded in the text Jen-t'ien-yien-mu, says that Lord Buddha explained the Dharma to his historical disciple Mahakashyapa by silently holding up a flower and Mahakashyapa ( Mahakassapa – in Pali, Mahakasho – in Japanese ) merely smiled, having understood the meaning. The sound of silence has a distinguished place in Buddhism, from Lord Buddha onwards stretching right upto the mythological householder disciple Vimalakirti. Historically, Emperor Ashoka was the first Indian emperor to spread Buddhism outside India. He sent his son, Mahendra ( Mahinda – in Pali ), and daughter, Sanghamitra ( Sanghamitta – in Pali ), to Sri Lanka. Lord 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, Lord 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 described the qualities a true leader should have; leaders tread fresh grass amongst other things. Lord 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 and a Mahapurusha ( Superhuman Man ). Buddhism preaches ultimate tolerance to all faiths. A Buddhist hates none, loves all. Lord Buddha's love for man was like a father's love for his sons. The overarching philosophy of Buddhism encompasses loving-kindness ( Maitri, Metta – in Pali ) for all sentient beings. Buddhists co-exist peacefully with all religions on earth. It is invigorating to keep a statue of Lord Buddha in one's place of meditation just as a Christian keeps a crucifix in his room. It is not idolatry. Buddhism is particularly relevant in the violence-ridden world today. As a Buddhist, I feel that mankind can do much better. Pacifism and non-violence ( Ahimsa – Sanskrit and Pali, Avihimsa – Pali ) are fundamental tenets of Buddhism. However, this does not mean that a man should not resist aggression. If an evil power engages in aggression, then a man should resist it with all powers at his disposal. Something called “Engaged Buddhism” is emerging in the West now. In this, Buddhists take up environmental and social issues as a part of their practice of the Dharma. A radical indeterminacy underpins and permeates human existence. Things happen that we do not want; things that we do not want happen. To bravely work out our way through to emancipation, to bring order in place of chaos, to face life with fortitude requires immense Enlightened courage. In this context, Buddhism enables us to reach salvation. That is the raison d'être of Buddhism. The essence of Buddhism, as summed up by Lord Buddha Himself, is: To cease from all error, To get virtue, And to purify the heart. |
I am the Chairman and Managing Director of MultiSpectra Consultants, MultiSpectra Global, MultiSpectra Consultants Asia, MultiSpectra Technologies, MultiSpectra Aqua, MultiSpectra, Inc., MultiSpectra Bangladesh, MultiSpectra Tripura, MultiSpectra H2O and MultiSpectra SkyHawk. MultiSpectra Consultants, MultiSpectra Global, MultiSpectra Consultants Asia, MultiSpectra Technologies, MultiSpectra Aqua, MultiSpectra, Inc., MultiSpectra Bangladesh, MultiSpectra Tripura, MultiSpectra H2O and MultiSpectra SkyHawk constitute the Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra - Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya Group of Companies. My work profile includes Civil Engineering consultancy, research and teaching. I am Vice President (East) of the Association of Consulting Civil Engineers (India). I am also Past Vice President (East) (2001 - 2005) of the Association of Consulting Civil Engineers (India). I am also a Visiting Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, an Honorary Professor of Water Engineering and Management at the Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India, and a Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal, India.
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