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Why Are We Backward? – Part XI Knowing English language can get one a job but the best of English literature can eradicate our backwardness Many Indians think that Shakespeare’s Romeo is like Laila’s Majnu, driven crazy by erotic love (in Greek, a language that distinguishes between different types of “love”, the word for “sexual love” is Eros). The reality is that Shakespeare wrote his play Romeo and Juliet in England at a time when the two major Christian sects, Protestants and Catholics hated each other enough to prevent their children from marrying each other, just like the play’s two warring households in the Italian city, Verona. Juliet enabled Romeo to transform sexual infatuation into Christ-like love (Agape) for her and her household (caste). Their love made it possible for them to lay down their lives for each other and to reconcile their warring castes. Shakespeare states the point of his play in the opening lines: Two households [castes], both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whole misadventured piteous overthrows  Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.  My previous article entitled ‘Backwards Can Be Better than British’ suggested that we are “backward,” in part, because no Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim scholar, religious leader or king loved us enough to make sustained effort to develop our vernaculars. Our religious cultures conspired to ensure that classical languages – Pali, Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian – would be used to exclude us from power that comes from knowledge. During the British era, reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy and rulers such as Lord Macaulay felt that the English language could enrich India’s vernaculars. However, the upper castes who learned English used it to advance their own interests, rather than the interests of the common people. The Bahujan “creamy layer” would do exactly what every other “creamy layer” does unless the spiritual force that reformed Europe and created English language and literature – the force that enabled Romeo to love his enemies (i.e. Juliet’s family) – liberates us from our religious culture of discriminating and disliking people of other traditions and castes. When the Government of Tamil Nadu began erecting along the beautiful Marina Beach in Chennai the statues of the creator of modern Tamil, it honored three Christian missionaries: Italian Jesuit Constanzo Beschi, English Missionaries Bishop Robert Caldwell, and Dr. G. U. Pope and only one Brahmin, Subramanya Bharathi, who renounced his Brahmin identity – just as Romeo renounced his Montague identity, in order to love those considered enemies by his caste. An important question is: Why didn’t English missionaries just teach us English? Why did they take the trouble to develop our languages? Was it just to convert us? If so, wouldn’t the objective of conversion have been served better had they taught our leaders English, hired them in their businesses and institutions and made promotions conditional on conversions? Why did they not do that? Unless we study the Bible and the literature that it shaped, we cannot understand the Agape (divine) love that drove Christian missionaries to serve us, including studying our dialects in order to turn them into literary languages. Their labors made it possible for Hindi, Urdu and Bengali to become national languages of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. As mentioned in the previous article, it is not possible to have a “government of the people, for the people and by the people” unless the language of the people is made the language of learning and governing. Our own religious scholars did not love us enough to take the trouble to do this for us because it is hard labor – especially if the beneficiaries are not even paying the scholars to undertake this trouble.  William Tyndale, who translated and published the first Bible (New Testament) into English, deeply offended the ruling elite. He was taking the very source of their power – knowledge – and giving it to the common man. The rulers convicted him and strangled and burned him at the stake. Yet, Tyndale’s labor created modern English and reformed his nation, including by producing writers such as Shakespeare. These writers were nurtured on Tyndale’s language and the Bible which was incorporated into the Geneva Bible before Shakespeare, and into the King James Bible soon after Shakespeare retired from the Globe Theatre. English speaking missionaries came to India to do for us what our own socio-religious leaders did not do, because the Bible taught them that God is love and that the Divine love (Agape) gives itself sacrificially without conditions and without expectation of reward, simply for our good. The Bible’s most famous verse is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus demonstrated God’s love not simply by serving the poor and the sick who were victims of the beastly kingdoms of this world but most supremely by sacrificing his own life to reconcile God’s enemies – sinners – with God and human enemies with each other: the Jews with non-Jewish Gentiles, Greeks and Barbarians, slaves and free, upper castes and lower castes. In Shakespeare’s hands, Romeo’s love for Juliet grows to become like Christ’s love for us. Romeo’s spiritual transformation happens in the famous Balcony scene, when Juliet says to him that he cannot marry her unless he forsakes his name: that is, his family identity (caste). Nothing else but their names (family identity) separated them from each other, because their family identities had become inextricably intertwined with their hatred for the other family. Romeo agreed that his family was defined and controlled by hatred for Juliet’s family and, therefore, his name (i.e. family’s hatred) would never allow him to marry into her family (caste).  If you study the Bible you would understand that Juliet asked Romeo to do exactly what the Lord

Maoist War Against India’s Criminalized Capitalism  On Saturday June 12, 2010 at 10 o’clock in the morning, army-trainedSpecial Forces launched the massive Operation Hawk. Its objective: to capture a hilltop on the Jharkhand-Orissa border that had become a Maoist camp. At 4 p.m. the next day, after sixteen hours of gun, grenade and mortar battle, the Special Forces declared victory, claiming that 300 Maoists had fled the camp. Indian forces airlifted their wounded away from the battlefield for medical help, admitting one casualty. They asserted that the Maoists must have carried their dead away on their backs, since no dead bodies were found. Four days later, in a different operation in West Bengal, our Special Forces returned from their triumphant hunt of wild pigs, parading on a pole the dead body of a young Indian woman. Militant Hindu parties are not the only ones calling for an all-out military action against the Maoists. But the army has declared its preference not to get involved directly – at least not for now. Why? To begin with, the pain of widowhood seems to have taught India’s de facto ruler, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, that it was not a female Tamil suicide–bomber but the arrogance of power that took her husband’s life. Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers also humbled the army he was using to establish peace in civil-war-torn Sri Lanka. Our generals understand that no army can win this war against India’s poor. To fight 100,000 Maoists moving freely in a terrain more than a thousand miles long, the army would have to deploy a million men. In response, the Maoists would need to do nothing except shoot down one helicopter and then disappear into towns. “Heroic” Indian soldiers would harass, kill and rape innocent civilians, as they did in Sri Lanka and Kashmir, while CNN-IBN cameras would follow, capturing horror stories for audiences all over the world. Since the many-sided cost of army action would be astronomical, our rulers are bound to use their capitalist buddies (who know how to buy politicians in India and America) to purchase Maoist leaders and make them our MLAs, MPs, and ministers. Maoist leaders would consider such offers if enough of their comrades were hauled as dead pigs on poles. However, such solutions would work only until other comrades labeled For Sale leaders as betrayers and filled vacated positions with more committed revolutionaries.  The Case against Criminalized Capitalism  During the last Parliamentary election, the Aspirant-in-Chief, Mr. L. K. Advani, promised that if the nation elected him as Prime Minister, he would bring back to India the $1,400 billion of Black Money hidden in secret Swiss accounts. Secular Americans have only $14.5 billion in similar secret accounts. The contrast suggests that India’s Hindu Capitalism, America’s Secular Capitalism and the original Christian Capitalism are entirely different ethical-economic systems. Hindu Capitalism is a “Free Market” economy that worships Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) and is guided solely by its dharma (moral duty) to pursue wealth by hook or by crook. In other words, Hindu Capitalism is unrestrained by a Holy God who commands, “Thou shalt not covet,” “Thou shalt not steal,” or “Thou shalt not kill.” The phrase Hindu Capitalism is not meant to imply that every Hindu businessman is a lawbreaker or that Muslim, Christian or Buddhists do not criminalize capitalism. The phrase is meant to describe India’s current economic system produced by a Hindu ethos that rejects the biblical idea that God is Holy and that his moral law is binding on all spheres of our lives, including the way we make and use money. How did Hindu capitalists generate such sums? Well, to mention just one source: in states where Operation Hawk took place, as many as sixty percent of all mines are illegal. That has made it possible for Maoists to radicalize the poor and fight criminal capitalists who are plundering our nation’s wealth. Some of these mines have been operating for as many as 20 years without even applying for a license. Some miners who did apply for licenses did not bother obtaining them because legal mining and banking require them to keep accounts, get them audited, and pay taxes. How can one keep honest accounts, finance a corrupt democracy, and maintain private militia (“Security”)? It is much easier to mine if you can keep politicians and bureaucrats in your pocket (and harem). The Maoist case against Hindu Capitalism is simple: A significant number of our miners, industrialists, democratically elected politicians, Gazetted officers (Administrative and Police), and their un-“holy” godmen have joined hands to become criminal mafias. Their power is reinforced by official militias called “Special Forces” and unofficial militias such as Selwa Judum that started the present round of tragic violence. But why can’t the poor participate in our free-market economy and benefit from it? Hasn’t the government spent thousands of Crores of rupees to educate and equip these backward STs, SCs and OBCs? Well, the British media is currently reporting that (while Indian capitalists hide their wealth in not-so-secret Swiss accounts) the British taxpayers have donated 340 million pounds (Rs. two thousand crores) to educate India’s poor through the Education for All Campaign, called Serva Shiksha Abhiyan. Allegedly, most of this money has either vanished or been misused. The Auditor General of India has admitted that at least 14 million pounds have been used to buy things like air conditioners for village schools that have no buildings or electricity. Understandably, tightly squeezed British taxpayers, already burdened with the responsibility to save Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Afghanistan, et cetera, are upset at the Hindu Compassion that loves to keep Lakshmi donated for the poor. In order to appease his taxpayers, Andrew Mitchell, the recently appointed British Secretary of State for International Development, has promised a full investigation into this allegation. He is promising to institutionalize zero tolerance for the abuse of the generosity of British Capitalism.  But Why Can’t Indian Maoists Follow Chinese Marxism?  Hindu Capitalists often argue that India should adopt China’s Marxist-Maoist capitalism because China’s  economy is beating India’s. Indeed, the Communist

“Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi’s intelligent and refreshing insights peel back the political, social, and moral issues of America and reveal a deception that runs deeper than our sociocultural roots. No longer can we take America’s goodness for granted. In four lectures originally given at our church in May 2009, Mangalwadi left us asking if we will allow America to become a nation seduced by Satan or if we will learn from the past and take a stand for righteousness.” —Pastor Duane Vander Klok, PhD, Resurrection Life Church, Grandville, Michigan “Vishal has the courage to ask the tough questions and the rare ability to make the complex accessible to the masses. It is telling when I struggle with my kids over first dibs to his materials!” —HankHanegraaff, President of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible AnswerMan broadcast The world is witnessing how amoral secular economics turned the government of Greece into a gambling den. The same invisible force has also blinded Wall Street and the government of the United States into gambling away the future of America’s children. Who listens when America’s most respected investor, Warren Buffett, calls “derivatives” the “economic weapons of mass destruction” that would devastate New York in a way the 9/11 terrorists could not even imagine? The utterly insecure subprime mortgages that government-sponsored economic enterprises (AIG, Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae) sold as “high value securities” were “derivatives.” President Bush forced honest, hard-working, tax-paying Americans to bail out corrupt gamblers that should have been thrown in prison. Future Commanders-in-Chief may need the military to squeeze bailout dollars from uncooperative Americans. For those who can see behind the screen, film Slumdog Millionaire gives a frightening glimpse into the intellectual bankruptcy of Western secularism. Why is it that secular reviewers of Slumdog Millionaire don’t even notice that the film’s scriptwriters and director have no clue why life is so miserable in that slum in Mumbai, India? What causes such brutalizing poverty? Or what can be done about it? Why is the film totally devoid of any meaningful notion of heroism and of a hero who has any idea of what to do about evil and poverty?  Viewers feel good at the end of the movie because the slumdog wins the cash and the girl he loves. Who cares that the lead character displays no particular wisdom, virtue, or strategy that contribute to his victory? Or that his success does nothing to the slum? Secular gamblers are pleased that the slumdog is favored by the god of luck; that his awful life experiences happened to have given him the answers to the questions the quizmaster happens to ask. Not too long ago, Mumbai was a “garden” where the wealthiest Indians liked to live. Secular experts can’t understand what turns gardens into slums because they choose to ignore the most important dimension of reality – the supernatural. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke give us the clue as to why Jesus’ life and work were focused on the kingdom of God. While he fasted and prayed for forty days, Jesus faced three temptations. In one them, “The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.’” Was Satan bluffing Jesus? The New Testament indicates that he wasn’t. In John 12:31, Jesus acknowledges Satan as “the prince of this world.” In Ephesians 2:2, the apostle Paul refers to the devil as “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” “The Rule of Law” was said to be a cardinal principle of the Roman Empire. How then could the Roman Emperor Nero burn his own citizens alive as torches for his garden parties?  The apostle John explains in 1 John 5:10, “We know that . . . the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” If there is a chance that evil has a supernatural dimension that seeks the glory, authority and splendor of the kingdoms of this world, than it is time that we get serious about the question: Will America become a kingdom of darkness? When a court rules the National Day of Prayer as “unconstitutional;” when senior citizens in a state subsidized retirement community in Georgia are not allowed to thank God for their meals; when evangelist Franklin Graham, the chairman of the National Day of Prayer, is not allowed to pray at the Pentagon; it is time to ask: as America ceases to be a nation under God, will it become a nation under Satan?

Could America Collapse Like A House of Cards? Yes, it can. More suddenly than many would want to believe! Can Glenn Beck save America? No! America cannot be conserved by Conservatism alone. Her cancer has gone much deeper than political economy. Postmodernism has turned America’s foundational, “self-evident” truths into modernist myth.  America’s Foundation: Truth or Myth? Roman Governor Pilate acknowledged that Jesus was innocent: yet, it wasn’t “self-evident” to him that Jesus had an inalienable right to life. Every judge that heard Paul’s case admitted that the charges against him were baseless: yet, it wasn’t “self-evident” to even one of them that Paul had an inalienable right to liberty. Why? Because the truths on which America was founded have never been self-evident to human reason in any culture. Jefferson would have been honest had America’s Declaration of Independence affirmed, “We hold these truths to be divinely revealed that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights (such as) life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” The Enlightenment’s misplaced confidence in human reason undermined America’s real foundation – God’s revelation; the Bible.  Now, as America amputates its soul, everything built on that foundation is crumbling. America’s civilizational superstructure of freedoms, justice and prosperity cannot be “conserved” without recovering their true foundation. Nineteen centuries before German philosopher Nietzsche was born, Pilate demonstrated that when truth is dead what rules is brute force. Pilate boasted that he had the power to crucify Jesus after acknowledging publicly that Jesus was innocent.   Truth liberates: but after demolishing truth only the naive would take liberty for granted. The Titanic is sinking —— So What? “My wife stood in the middle of the living room with her hands on her hip” narrated my friend . . . his voice choking. “She looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘I want to have sex with him. What’s wrong with that? Don’t I have a right to pursue my happiness? Who gave you the authority to take away my rights?’” “Tears were streaming down my eyes,” my friend’s voice cracked with emotions, “and I couldn’t say a word. Everything that she was saying, I had taught her. I grew up in a Christian home, but my professors seemed better educated than my pastors: therefore, I gave up my childhood faith. I believed what the university taught; what Hollywood taught; what the media taught. I followed the world’s wisdom and my marriage collapsed like a house of cards. “The emotional cost of the divorce was as heavy as economic. We lost our home. Now, she is without medical insurance, because her boyfriend won’t marry her. My new wife is wonderful with my kids, but by court’s order they have to spend so many days with their mother. My 12-year old daughter is very uncomfortable having to live with a man who is not her step dad. The emotional, educational and the social price that our kids will pay for our divorce is still unknown: this morning she woke up crying and could not be consoled. She dreamt that mummy had killed her boyfriend by pushing him off a cliff. I don’t know how to interpret her dreams . . . but we know that her mother feels trapped: She cannot leave him because then she wouldn’t have a house. . . In the university, Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son seemed childish . . . but now I know that Jefferson knew that the pursuit of pleasure was the pursuit of unhappiness. Jefferson read the Bible because he knew that happiness comes from a pursuit of virtue as taught in the Sermon on the Mount.”  Margaret Thatcher —— Why Conservatism Can’t Save The best known British Conservative, Margaret Thatcher, UK’s Prime Minister from 1979-1990, explained why Conservatism was insufficient. On May 21, 1988 she said to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, “We are a nation whose ideals were founded on the Bible. Also it is quite impossible to understand our literature without grasping this fact. That is the strong practical case for ensuring that children at school are given adequate instruction in the part which the Judaeo-Christian tradition has played in moulding our laws, manners and institutions. How can you make sense of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, or of the constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century in both Scotland and England, without such fundamental knowledge? But I would go further than this. The truths of the Judaeo-Christian tradition are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to that peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long.  “To assert absolute moral values is not to claim perfection for ourselves . . . one of the great principles of our Judaeo-Christian heritage is tolerance. People of other faiths and cultures have always been welcomed in our land, assured of equality under law, or proper respect and of open friendship. There is absolutely nothing incompatible with this and our desire to maintain the essence of our own identity. There is no place for racial or religious intolerance in our creed. . . “Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians, to take counsel together, their purpose is not (or should not be) to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit——something which may be quite different. Nevertheless, I am an enthusiast for democracy. And I take that position, not because I believe majority opinion is inevitably right or true – indeed, no majority can take away God-given rights – but because I believe it effectively safeguards the value of the individual, and more than any other system, restrains the abuse of power by the few. And that is a Christian concept. “But there is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves. Political structures, state institutions, collective ideals

“The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.” Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003 p.231)  “. . . when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God.” Apostle Paul, 1 Thessalonians 2:13 In his novel, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown argues that since the Bible “did not arrive by fax from heaven” it cannot be “The Word of God?” But what are words? How do random chemical reactions in a human body turn into rational theories explaining the cosmos, an “inspired” poem celebrating patriotism, a novel promoting parenting, or simply a sentence intended to hurt a sensitive soul? What is language? Is it an accidental product of blind chance or an essence of a spiritual being: mere dust turned into a “living soul” who can infuse meaning, values and judgments into physical sounds and symbols? The Bible is very different from other books that claim to be inspired, such as the Qur’an. Usually it does not use the phrase “the Word of God” in the same way as other ancient and contemporary “revelations” do. For example, unlike the Prophet Muhammad, none of the writers of the four Gospels claim that they received their information in a prophetic trance by revelation from God or from an angel. Nor do the gospel writers claim that a spirit entity used them as channels for “automatic writing.” Private revelations cannot be confirmed as supernaturally inspired unless they predict specific events that come true exactly as predicted. Most books of the Bible are not revelations received in a subjective, trance-like experience.1 The Gospels, for example, claim to be public truth. That is, they bear courageous witnesses to public events such as a crucifixion. They challenge the interpretations of Jewish scholarship and a brutal Roman state and open themselves to cross-examination. Matthew, Mark and John ask us to believe their writings because they claim that their eyewitness accounts are true. Luke asks us to believe his gospel because he claims to have researched the facts systematically and checked them out with eyewitnesses. This is a very human way of writing indeed! Muslim and secular critics (including Dan Brown) assume that Christians believe the Bible because the Roman Catholic Church decided that it was God’s Word. The reality, however, is that the Church believes the Bible because Jesus lived and “died according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:2-3, Luke 24: 44-48, etc.). The Gospels make it clear that Jesus did not have a martyr complex: he did not want to die (Luke 22:41). He could have escaped arrest in the garden of Gethsemane. In fact, at the moment of his arrest Peter gave Jesus an excellent opportunity to escape into the dark, but Jesus rebuked him (Luke 22:49). Jesus could also have saved his life during his trial, for neither of the two judges—Pilate and Herod—found him guilty. Yet, instead of trying to save his life Jesus laid it down. And he did it for one reason alone: so that the Scriptures may be fulfilled (Matthew 26:54, Mark 14:49 etc.). Why did Jesus take the Scriptures so seriously that he chose to die to fulfill them? From the very beginning, the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) reveal a God who speaks: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). Thus the Jewish worldview sees language as a characteristic not of chemistry but of the spirit. Human beings speak because they are made in the image of a Spirit that said, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). Man became a “living soul” when God breathed his spirit (or “breath”) into a body of clay (Genesis 2:7). That is why the human language has both spiritual as well as physical aspects. The Bible teaches that God is love. Love includes communication. Both the Old and the New Testament teach that God speaks to us because He loves us. And He gave us the gift of language so that as His children we may know and love Him and one another. Love, Jesus taught, was the whole point of divine revelation or communication (Matthew 22:37). Thus, in Judeo-Christian understanding, love and language are aspects not of our chemistry but of our psyche or soul. Our chemistry is specifically designed to facilitate love, knowledge, and communication, including worship.  Jesus, Daniel and the Jewish Scriptures  Jesus treated the Hebrew Scriptures in the same way as did the Hebrew prophet, Daniel, who was an administrator in Babylon. Daniel was the younger contemporary of prophet Jeremiah. In his day, many prophets claimed to be receiving revelations from God. The prophets who predicted peace and prosperity for Jerusalem enjoyed religious and political patronage. Yet their prophecies turned out to be false. Jeremiah, on the other hand, called his nation to repentance. Otherwise, he said, God would bring doom and destruction through the Babylonians. Jeremiah was condemned for treason and almost killed, but later events had proved him right. Therefore, Daniel took Jeremiah’s predictions seriously. Decades after Jeremiah was gone, Daniel kept reading Jeremiah’s scrolls – even though Jeremiah was not included in the Jewish cannon. The more Daniel read, the more convinced he became that Jeremiah’s predictions had come true, therefore, he was a prophet from God. Finally, Daniel was so convinced that Jeremiah’s words were God’s words that he was willing to be thrown into a den of lions for the sake of those words. Here is what happened: One of Jeremiah’s prophecies was that Jerusalem would be rebuilt seven decades after its destruction (Jer. 25: 11-12). That was just about the time when the Medo-Persian coalition defeated Babylon. Jeremiah’s prophecy (in conjunction with dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel himself) helped Daniel understand the significance of that momentous event. He believed “the word of the Lord given to prophet Jeremiah” (Daniel 9:2) and began to pray for rebuilding of Jerusalem. At that

Last night (Sunday, March 6, 2011) BBC and CNN began what FOX News has been doing for a while – discuss the perceived decline of Western civilization. Fareed Zakaria served as the anchor in the CNN special, “Restoring the American Dream: Getting Back to #1.” It will be broadcast again on Saturday, March 12. Britain’s Channel 4 also launched a six-part series based on Harvard historian, Niall Ferguson’s book, Civilization: The West and the Rest. Ferguson is the prime witness also in the CNN program and in TIME magazine (March 14, 2010) that preceded the shows. Fareed Zakaria is one of the finest products of the secular West. He agrees with Ferguson’s pessimism: “When I look at the world today and the strong winds of technological change and global competition, it makes me nervous.” Why should the most innovative and entrepreneurial nation in the world be so nervous about technological change and competition? Zakaria explains that “the most unsettling” aspect of the problem is that Americans (that includes TIME’s Editor-at-Large, David von Drehle) “seem unable to grasp the magnitude of the challenges that face us.” Why can’t secular Americans comprehend?  Zakaria takes statistics seriously: America’s 15-year olds rank 17th in the world in science and 25th in math. In the “Developed” world, Americans have slipped from #1 to #12 in college graduation and 79th in Elementary School enrollment, and yet, for every $1 that America spends on young people under 18, it spends $4 on senior citizens. This, Zakaria says, proves that a self-centered generation now controls the American political system in its own self-interest. It invests in its present but not in America’s future. The main legacy this generation will leave to its children is the burden of guns and debts. How do Zakaria and Ferguson understand these statistics? Interestingly, Zakaria agrees with FOX host Glenn Beck that the problem is political. However, while Beck thinks that the solution lies in returning to the 18thCentury Founders such as Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, Zakaria, on the other hand, considers that to be “unreflective ancestor worship.” In his opinion the solution lies in discarding the Constitution that no one understands now. He writes in TIME “. . . the Constitution was one of the wonders of the world – in the 18th century. But today we face the reality of a system that has become creaky. We have an Electoral College that no one understands and a Senate that does not work, . . . We have a crazy-quilt patchwork of towns, municipalities and states with overlapping authority, bureaucracies and resulting waste. We have a political system geared toward cease-less fundraising and pandering to the interests of the present with no ability to plan, invest or build for the future.” So, what is the solution? Following economist Mancur Olson’s thesis in The Rise and Decline of Nations,Zakaria feels that America may need what happened to Germany and Japan: Before the World-Wars, Great Britain was the super-power. It won the Wars, but the nations that lost and were virtually destroyed quickly overtook Britain after WWII. They surpassed Britain because their destruction gave Germany and Japan the opportunity to get rid of past and build their future. Conclusion: A catastrophe is needed to destroy a “sclerotic” America, and give it an opportunity to reinvent itself. As an academic, Niall Ferguson has had a bit more leisure than Zakaria to analyze the problem. He understands that the problem is not American but “Western.” Therefore, his series is more detailed. Britain’s Channel 4 launched it last night and will continue for five more weeks. Ferguson’s thesis is that 500 years ago, following the Protestant Reformation, the West “patented six killer applications that set it apart” from “the Rest” of the world. These were “competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic.” Japan was the first non-Western nation to download these killer applications, but now many nations, including China and India, are downloading them. China’s size enabled it to easily surpass Japan. Soon, India will surpass them both. But why should others progress be a problem for America? In an article in The Telegraph published today (March 7, 2011), Ferguson gives one of his conclusions: “we are already living through the twilight of Western predominance. But that is not just because most of the Rest have now downloaded all or nearly all of our killer apps. It is also because we ourselves have lost faith in our own civilisation.” I suspect that Ferguson will be very embarrassed if someone told him that his conclusion is virtually identical with what Glenn Beck has been saying on FOX News. One difference is that while Beck tends to blame this loss of “faith” on some political conspiracy, Ferguson perceives that the West’s loss of faith in its core assumptions is linked to the secularization of its universities. It was (pre-secular) education, he writes, that nurtured Western civilization: “In Britain, public school boys and Oxbridge men (and it was mostly men) were expected not only to have read the classics of the ancient world (Western civilisation’s first incarnation) but also to have a good grasp of the West’s revival after the Dark Ages and subsequent rise to global dominance. “Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, French and American Revolutions, Industrial Revolution, Electoral Reform – the big “Rs” of the West’s ascent – were noted, memorised and then “discussed” in innumerable essays.” Secular education, Ferguson goes on to lament, was not able to sustain this older tradition of Christian education, . . . “And then something changed. After around 1960, the word “civilisation” slumped in popularity. Universities – beginning with Stanford in 1963 – ceased to offer the classic ‘Western Civ’ history course. To the generation that came of age protesting against the Vietnam War, Mahatma Gandhi had been right when he implied that ‘Western civilisation’ was a contradiction in terms. It was nothing more than a euphemism for a blood-steeped, bomb-dropping imperialism. “In British schools, too, the grand narrative of Western ascent fell out of fashion. Thanks to an educationalists’ fad that elevated ‘historical skills’

This is part VIII of the series, “Why Are We Backward?” published by FORWARD Press, a bilingual, monthly magazine for India’s “Backward” Castes. For reprinting rights, contact editor, Ivan Kostka Aspire.Prakashan@gmail.com or email info@revelationmovement.com The 9 million people of Haiti, largely of African descent, living in approximately 10,000 square miles in the paradise-like Caribbean island of Hispaniola, constitute the only nation in the world which gained its independence through a successful slave rebellion in 1804. Sadly, Haiti remains the poorest country in the Americas. Its independence was inspired by the secular idealism of the French Revolution and launched in a voodoo ceremony on August 14, 1791 that included sacrificing a pig, drinking its blood and making a pact with the demonic supernatural. In 200 years, none of its 32 coups, multiple dictatorships and democratic elections has succeeded in building political freedoms. Lawlessness, insecurity, instability, and dependency permeate Haitian society, preventing their independence from attaining either the economic potential witnessed during the colonial period or that of Caribbean tourism today. On January 12, 2010 Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince was devastated by an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude: as many as 200,000 people are estimated killed and now, more than a week later, 20,000 people are reported to be dying every day due to lack of food, water and medical aid. The Disaster: Natural or Cultural? On 17 October, 1989 an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude also struck the San Francisco Bay Area in California in the United States of America: Only 63 people died. At that time the Bay Area had over 5 million residents; Port-au-Prince has less than a million.   Why this difference? The Bay Area was built on a culture of law, justice, freedom, and consequent trusting social order which makes prosperity possible. In contrast, in spite of many wonderful exceptions, Haitian society is built on a culture of immoral corruption, oppression, social mistrust and resultant poverty. Builders routinely disregard the rules for constructing safe buildings because political, bureaucratic and law enforcement institutions move on the wheels of bribery.  In plain words: while Haiti’s earthquake was natural, its disaster is cultural. Therefore, even though individuals need immediate relief, the only way to rebuild Haiti is to transform its culture. Can the Avatar Save Haiti from its Corruption? In order to overcome its culture of corruption and poverty, Haiti needs many heroes like Jake, in James Cameron’s megahit movie Avatar. Jake was an outsider but, like Jesus Christ, he incarnated among a people in great need and became one of them. He chose to sacrifice his own life in order to save a vulnerable people that he dearly loved.  The Avatar’s hero is ideal but its scriptwriter is naïve. The people of Haiti practice Voodoo spiritism because they understand and know reality better than Hollywood’s romantic idealists.  The Haitians know that they do not know the supreme creative spirit, they call Bondey. Since they cannot know or reach Bondey, they assume that the Creator is also incapable of reaching them, revealing Himself to them, loving them enough to discipline them or to incarnate in their midst to save them. French Roman Catholicism had tried to convert their slaves in the 17th century; therefore, some Catholic trappings adorn Haitian Voodoo. Yet, because most Haitians believe that the Creator does not care enough to interfere with human affairs, Haitian Voodoo does not fear or serve the unknown, absentee Creator. Nevertheless, the Haitians do not think that only the material world is real. They know that spirits exist:  some of them get possessed and spirits communicate with their religious leaders. Their devout priests claim to receive certain supernatural powers from the spirits. The Haitians call these spirits Lwa or loa and fear and serve them. Like many Indians as well as the Na’vi people in Avatar, the Haitians believe that these spirits govern nature. Disasters, such as the present earthquake, have taught Haitians that the spirits that govern nature or possess individuals are not always good and benevolent. They may contribute to life, but they also bring disease, disasters and death.  As the movie puts it the Mother Earth Force doesn’t take sides between good and evil. It is amoral. It merely restores balance – for example, if you turn forest into desert, you take the consequences. Indian Tantriks (occult priests) know well, no god or goddess sacrifices his/her life to save others. Quite the opposite. They may demand the blood of your neighbor’s child before they grant your petitions. Therefore, just as many of our “holy” tantriks and ascetics become demoniacs, many Haitians have also become like the gods and goddesses they worship – capricious, greedy and unpredictable. Haiti is different than the Bay Area because Haitian society is built on a worldview the universe is not cosmos ruled by the Word of One benevolent and just Creator. They think we live in a multiverse – a chaos – governed by many unpredictable deities. This worldview does not encourage a systematic study of nature (science) or an attempt to govern and manage nature (technology). Since the multiverse has no Law-Giver who will hold us accountable, there is no need to be a law abiding citizen – especially if you can bribe human rulers just as your priests bribe the gods.  Could Cameron’s Portrayal of America be Prophetic? Cameron’s Avatar portrays secular America as a brutal super-power, ever-ready to sacrifice simple, nature-worshipping people at the altar of amoral economic greed. America has had ugly moments in its history. Haiti, however, is seeing a very different America – a nation that is quick to sacrifice billions of dollars in aid; a nation filled with churches that are sending thousands of volunteers to serve the helpless; an army that will spend its resources to rescue the trapped and save aid workers from mobs of greedy, spirit-worshipping Haitians who will loot food from the mouths of lonely elderly and vulnerable orphans. Unfortunately, James Cameron’s Avatar could turn out to be a prophetic portrayal of 21st century America. Following the European Enlightenment, American intellectuals also learned what Indians and Haitians have always known—the human mind, by itself (without divine revelation) cannot know the Creator, His moral law or His saving grace. (However, does our inability to reach Him, prevents Him