Just imagine another example – a great culture, a thriving community with a distinct identity and a one uniquely in unison with nature in deep jungles. There are several stories of the richness of the African culture. One fine day, some Europeans realized these are gullible stock who can be captured and enslaved to work on their newly acquired land. That’s not barbarism, that ghastly criminal, barbaric are at least rudimentary and rustic, this was a pogrom. The weakness was civility and absence of gun culture, yes they had their belladonna arrows. But belladonna falls weak when the bullets rip through and these were captured as slaves. More than two hundred years now, they are gradually recuperating as a community. Is this the story of weakness? Of culture, connect or humanity? They lacked nothing except Ammonium Nitrate and the Bullet.
Fly another continent apart, down you see the Mayan and Incas and other Latin American culture. Europeans totally decimated and destroyed their country, culture and identity, killed their men and made a big Harlem of concubines. There is not enough.
Let’s turn to India, Europe or Mongols, they invaded a serenely evolved country that reached a height that no civilization competed. India was a panacea and a place of happening, a country for immigrants for thousands of years, a very welcoming one, a great land that assimilated all, that coexisted with all to usher in civility unforeseen anywhere on the blue marble. That spectacular fabric was woven by Sanatan Dharma, which evolved a philosophy that nurtured multiple facets of life, living and human cognition and potential without imposing itself. Just look at the ethnic diversity, just keep analyzing where these distinct ethnic stock might have arisen from. Swathes of civilization migrated in herds beyond their harsh terrains to establish and identify with the land beyond Hindukush to add to the gallantry of innovations from the discovery of Yogas, the Panchang, The Astrology, The Zero…To make themselves as part of these great evolved cultures. Not to tear apart with religious ideology or boundaries.
Come to Genghis Khan and his cavalry, they gutted huge libraries, plundered people and destroyed families, culture and the entire microcosm built by the finest threads of Dharma, an ultimate form of ideology, not just religious one. Then the Britishers and flocking Europeans. Waves after waves plundered and destroyed ravaged the country and its culture – that country is still recuperating its identity. Current times are a snapshot in recovery, it won’t matter if Fitz has revised its economic outlook to 6.8% from 7%. It will rise, like a Sphinx.
Let us fly a little towards southeast – let us visit this great mass of land just below the Mongols. Oh boy, several novelties, innovation, and refined culture thrived here too. Dynasties after dynasties enriched this nation, only to make it richer and deeper. Not just paper, silk but several other facets of human intellect were revealed uniquely in this land. People here hated war but often brutalized from the north, that they decided to build that wall, not to separate and stop immigration but to maintain and nurture their civilization. That Great Wall of China was recognized so much from space, that even the meteors hugged it often. Those nasty Europeans could never build it, trading spices and silk, they borrowed deep and injected heroin, to turn the civilization into decadence and dependency, ultimately looting and succumbing it to its knees. China is that civilization that is emerging as a towering figurehead from the East. Today’s is a snapshot if their GDP is receding and internal debt ballooning. It is just a matter of correction.
What is so common in these three scenarios?
The uncommon common thread between vastly separated continents.
Shashank Heda, Dallas, Texas
mymilieu.org 