Dr Pingali Gopal is a Neonatal and Paediatric Surgeon practising in Warangal for the last twenty years. He loves books and his subjects of passion are Indian culture, Physics, Vedanta, Evolution, and Paediatric Surgery. After years of ignorance in a flawed education system, he has rediscovered his roots, paths, and goals and is extremely proud of Sanatana Dharma, which he believes belongs to all Indians irrespective of religion, region, and language. Dr. Gopal is a huge admirer of all the present and past stalwarts of India and abroad correcting past discourses and putting India back on the pedestal which it so truly deserves. You can visit his blog at: pingaligopi.wordpress.com.
IndicaA has published his latest book - Decolonizing Bharat, The Balu Way: An Interpretation of the Works of Prof. Balagangadhara and the Ghent School, where he talks about several ideas of Prof Balagangadhara on Bharat as civilisational-cultural unity that has stood strong for at least five thousand years. And the people of the land defined by its geographical boundaries representing a unified culture transcending many of the divisive narratives breaking India today.
Please could you describe how a paediatric surgeon turned to Indian Knowledge Systems and Indian history. How did you find the sharp lens that you cast through your writings on colonialism and India's past.
The process was somewhat gradual. My urban-based, English-medium education and subsequent medical career kept me occupied, gently separating me from Indian culture. Despite the lack of explicit information about Indian culture in school and college, I managed to retain an intuitive understanding of its richness, perhaps due to the influence of Amar Chitra Katha comics. The majority of our school history focused on invasions, but we never learnt why they needed to come to India in the first place—except for generic terms such as India was "sone ki chidiya" (Golden Bird)!
A passionate reader, I dedicated my free time to reading the best of English fiction and non-fiction. At the age of 40, during a Swami Vivekananda-related fair, I instinctively purchased the complete 9-volume writings of Swami Vivekananda, at an astounding cost of Rs 450. At the time, all I knew about Swami Vivekananda was his Chicago address, which I had learned about in one of my school chapters. As I started reading the volumes, I was completely gobsmacked (in my daughter’s language) at the depth and profundity of Indian culture, philosophy, heritage, and knowledge systems. I repeatedly kicked myself for neglecting to read his works over the course of four decades of my life. How did I miss him?
I thoroughly blamed myself and the education system for this. But then I decided it was not too late. I began my journey into the world of Indian culture by exploring the writings of Dharampal, Michel Danino, Chittaranjan Naik, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Sri Aurobindo. Simultaneously, with my spattering knowledge of Sanskrit, I started taking sips of the wonderful knowledge already set in place in ancient India. Others, such as Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Vishwa Adluri, RC Mazumdar, and finally Balagangadhara, followed, marking my complete immersion in Indian culture. I know that I will remain occupied for the remainder of my life as my journey has just begun.
And no, I have not stopped my practice, as many people might believe. There are two reasons for that: one is that my dear wife handles all household activities, and the other is that I gave up cricket, TV, and Facebook a decade and a half ago. I firmly believe that the busiest professional anywhere in India will find time to pursue his or her passions if one gives up cricket and TV!
With Dr S N Balangangadhara and Jakob De Roover
In a two-year old essay on Dr SN Balagangadhara, you write that when a nation is demoralised, there come leaders who can show the way. To quote you, "The country must one day look at Balu for solutions. Maybe, it is still to sink to the deepest level to reach a point of hopelessness; only then will we hold the rope thrown by the Balu school, it seems." Could you tell us more in the light of your latest book on his work.
My book, Decolonizing Bharat the Balu Way, is essentially a compilation of the many summaries and reviews of the works of Balu and other scholars of the Ghent School. Two significant factors shaped my life. One was my father's employment as a central government employee, specifically as a geophysicist at ONGC, which involved frequent transfers across the country. We moved with him to many places and interacted with other people in the organisation from all parts of the country. I was born in Assam and later relocated to various places such as Kolkata, Jammu, Dehradun, Ahmedabad, and Mumbai, all the while speaking Telugu at home. I completed a significant portion of my education in Ahmedabad. As a result, I developed a deeper connection with various regions of the country as a resident. It was more than a tourist-type connection with different places.
Secondly, my profession as a doctor allowed me to connect with people more intimately from all faiths, regions, languages, and jatis. They belonged to all socio-economic strata of society, and I had access to their deeper struggles and stories. In my life experience, I experienced an intuitive sense of unity across India, but I was unable to fully comprehend it. There was also a significant discrepancy between the knowledge I gained from my school readings and the extracurricular literature I read in college about India. The sense of shame or embarrassment about belonging to a particular Jati, language, region, and country never left me.
The sense of discomfort intensified during the couple of years I spent in the UK. Many questions that came from my British colleagues were plain misunderstandings, but I never had the conceptual tools to reply to them. Not that their questions were mischievous, but their caste and religion-related questions didn't match my Indian experiences. Could it be that I had no connection to the "actual" India? That was indeed impossible, I thought to myself. There was something wrong, I felt, but, of course, I could not articulate it.
After four decades of my life, my readings gave me a strong perspective on Indian culture. However, it was only Balu who helped me comprehend the vast civilisational and cultural unity of the country. This provided the solace and explanation I had been searching for. The present understandings of religion, "Hinduism," secularism, and caste can never lead to harmony in the country. In fact, the fissures are only going to increase in the future. Balu's work is widely available for everyone to access and understand. However, people often criticise him and his ideas because they fail to properly engage with them or conduct a more thorough study.
Some feel he is too abstract; some feel he is too simple; some feel he speaks circularly. However, Balu and the scholars from the Ghent School have provided a clear and concise understanding of Indian culture that resonates with the everyday experiences of the average Indian. They show a direction to move forward into areas of further study. To me, the simplicity that some people perceive is an expression of profundity, not a reduction. Maybe something like e=mc² or “Aham Brahmasmi,” I feel.
The present narratives, at some point, are bound to reach the end of the alley, and here is where the works of Balu will show the light. As an Indian, I firmly believe that Balu's narrative is the only one that provides comfort in one's own identity without feeling superior or inferior to anyone. This makes major sense to me.
Could you briefly describe what according to you are the most pressing issues of modern day India. Do we still continue to rely on the west to define our problems and again look to them for solutions?
Yes. The pressing problems of the country include the understanding of Hinduism, the caste system, the application of secularism as a solution for harmony, and the colonial consciousness that colours many of the critical narratives. Our social sciences have a major task ahead of them. A correct understanding of the Jatis and Kulas should be the focus of their scholarship in society. When discussing Varna, they should interact with traditional practitioners to understand larger concepts such as guna, dharma, karma, and reincarnation.
While the STEM fields are flourishing, I have realised that the social sciences play a crucial role in establishing a robust foundation for our nation's self-identity and genuine pride in our heritage, without the need for falsification. After independence, our ideologically dominated academia adopted a peculiar philosophy that equated the past (represented by ancient and mediaeval India) as primitive and the future (represented by the West) as advanced.
But, as people who understand the greatness of Indian culture like Sri Aurobindo, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Balu say, the past may in fact hold solutions for the present and the future. We may have embedded solutions in our culture for the multicultural world of today which need an urgent rediscovery. The idea of a linear progression of history leading to a specific end point is distinctly Western. For Sri Aurobindo, for example, India started at the highest Vedic levels, and further eras were in fact a degeneration. Traditions, Jatis, and rituals are the building blocks of our culture, and trying to dismantle these for the cause of modernity is only going to destroy the great Indian culture.
You have explored the work of other historians, philosophers. There is a saying that the "White man has ideas, whereas the Indian has visions." What we are all looking for is ideas and solutions, which is the Western way. Where do you think we should look for the vision for India's problems?
As Balu says, the first is to decolonize our social sciences. The second step is to actively involve traditional scholars in discussions about India. The third step involves the revival of Sanskrit as a national language and the serious consideration of vernacular languages as viable options for achieving the highest level of education in any field. The English language limits thousands of brilliant students across the country from achieving their best potential. This is indeed a painful fact of our English-based educational systems. The irony lies in the fact that, despite spending your entire life studying in English, you still need to demonstrate your proficiency in the language by taking exams like the TOEFL, IELTS, or similar ones in order to gain entry abroad. It was certainly a little humiliating when I had to take the IELTS test when I was going to the UK. But that is an aside.
At a larger level, as all our intellectuals like Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Balagangadhara explain, it is imperative that the West and the East, or India, meet as equals. If one culture consistently perceives itself as superior and another persistently as inferior, seeking constant validation from the other, it will undoubtedly hinder the progress of humanity.
Sri Aurobindo wrote that in the evolutionary future, neither Europe nor India, nor any race, country, or continent, has been totally civilised. If civilisation is a harmony of spirit, body, and mind, where has it existed? He felt that the European mind prioritises growth through battles and struggles, which then leads to some kind of concert. The Indian principle of concert, on the other hand, strives to find its foundation in unity and then reach out toward greater oneness. Both were required according to him.
The unity of the Self at the beginning and end of all material and non-material worlds is the basis of Indian metaphysics. This is the foundation of all sciences, philosophies, arts, literature, ecology, and feminism in Indian culture. To prolong and increase the quotient of individual and collective happiness, the material and technological advancements of the West must be in synchrony and harmony with Eastern ideals.
It is crucial to reiterate that the West and the East must meet as equals, acknowledging their mutual importance while striving for the ideal blend. Different configurations and root models do exist for learning, but only a better understanding will benefit humanity and the world. Indians, most importantly, must understand India through their own lenses and frameworks and not through the lenses provided by the West. This has been happening for many decades now, leading to severe distortions in our own culture's self-understanding.
Today our society is extremely heterogeneous, and what worked in terms of ritual, worship, community, language, no longer works its magic. How do we revive a civilisation where the sense of society is so fragmented that one can't find common solutions that are universally acceptable.
The way of the world is multiculturalism, pluralism, and diversity. Our fantastic civilisation's traditional polity was essentially a decentralised model, incorporating a Dharmic monarchy. Centralization was never a feature of our civilization, which achieved so much in terms of prosperity at all levels. The proof of our riches is that people came to plunder us, and the reverse rarely, if ever, happened. Indeed, this evidence suggests that our models may be unique and more efficient. Indian culture inherently embraces heterogeneity. Traditions form the bedrock of our culture. Foreign lands gave birth to religions like Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, which eventually transformed into traditions within Indian culture. India has developed this solution to promote harmony in a multicultural world. The fault lies with intellectuals across all sides of the spectrum.
Traditions primarily deal with the "other" through either syncretism or mutual interaction, but the fundamental attitude is one of "indifference to the differences." In contrast, religions usually treat the "other" with intolerance. India is a land of traditions, says Balu, and not religions. This is his fundamental thesis. Traditions view conversion as unethical, while religions view it as an inherent dynamic.
Hindu intellectuals must comprehend that the conversion of our longstanding traditions into religions aims to establish rigid doctrines and principles that were not present before. This paradoxically gives rise to intolerance and fundamentalism. The Indian solution has always been to traditionalise religions that come from alien lands. They integrated into Indian culture by behaving more and more like traditions as they lost focus on trying to distinguish between the true and the false and also the focus of proselytization. This is precisely the process of traditionalization that the Islamic clergy and evangelists strive to resist. It is the responsibility of intellectuals and moderates to continue this process of traditionalization, just as it is the responsibility of Sanatani intellectuals to prevent our traditions from becoming religions.
Unfortunately, Hindu intellectuals have remained trapped in the same colonial ideas, perceiving various Indian traditions as religions. The frameworks have remained unchanged since the era of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Only a few, such as Bankim Chandra and Sri Aurobindo, seriously questioned the understanding of Hinduism as a religion. Similarly, one could easily construct a narrative that views the various Varnas and Jatis as simple categories of different kinds, devoid of any hierarchies. There would be no need to dismantle or destroy anything, and yet there is a new understanding of Indian social and traditional systems.
As a doctor and scientist what are your thoughts on the fact that while our civilization was very advanced in all spheres of scientific thinking in the past, can we say the same is the case of its connection to modern science? As Joseph Campbell puts it there is a lot of difference between the science of 2000 AD and 2000 BC. Do you think this is one of the areas in which we have suffered the most due to colonisation?
Indian traditions were never antithetical to science. The notion of separating science from religion is a Western concept that lacks relevance in Indian culture. For Indian culture, every route in the external world, whether it be science, poetry, arts, or literature, is deeply intertwined with the divine and leads to the divine. Our scientific and material achievements are as significant as the spiritual. The writings of Dharampal clearly illustrate this point.
The foundation of our science began with a deep unity of the Self, and the world was a multifaceted expression of this single unity. This "Self in All" philosophy serves as the cornerstone of our Sanatani culture, offering a unique approach to science and technology. Our precolonial India was performing exceptionally well in all fields. Knowledge generation was the driving force of our culture. The colonialisms (Islamic and European) perhaps were a temporary state where knowledge went into a protection mode.
After the end of colonial rule, the production of knowledge shifted to a different paradigm, beginning with matter, and then building to higher orders of complexity. The shift to a different paradigm, which began with matter, may have slowed our entry into modern ways. However, Indians are highly adaptable, and in my opinion, we performed quite well in the STEM fields. It is with social sciences, primary education, vernacular languages, and understanding of indigenous culture that we lost our way.
Books like your latest book on a scholar who has expounded extensively on the topic of colonisation and its impact can offer both an opportunity to us to reflect as individuals as well as a reference point for social change. Which of these in your opinion is possible, given that we are so busy with the happenings of everything outside us that we have forgotten what is possible inside, as Bharatiya philosophy asks us to do.
Indian darshanas were very clear about the inside and the outside. The external does not stand separate from the internal. This is the driving philosophy of Advaitic Vedanta, as we are all aware. The distinction between the sacred and the secular does not exist in Indian culture. Desireless activity is the highest ideal for the individual, as insisted by all our texts.
Understanding India through our unique perspectives can benefit each Indian citizen both individually and collectively. Today's narratives instill in each of us a sense of shame, anger, pride, privilege, and hurt in varying proportions, all of which are fundamentally wrong. A careful reading of Balu firstly dispels the wrong narratives that are hurting society at all levels, and secondly, at least I feel, it brings a sense of comfort to each individual towards all his or her identities as belonging to a particular faith, varna, jati, language, or region.
Balu's reading instils the fundamental belief that we are all truly one. The governments, scholars, politicians, and intellectuals also try to bring about that unity, but the narratives and explanations they have are straight out of the colonial books, and the direction in which they go only brings more strife, confusion, anger, and hate. Nothing requires destruction or dismantling. A change of our lenses would lead to a better understanding of Indian culture and a completely new picture of India.
