India vs Bharat Essay

Ancient Indians were not known to wipe out a great reek of history. Historians have had to rely a lot on accounts by unknown travellers and foreign sources to reconstruct our history. And each(prenominal) such sources, including Megasethenes, Fa-hsien and many medieval Arab travellers, have uniformly found that Indians were remarkably impartiality abiding and that crime was truly r are.Most historians including A.L. Basham and recent writers like Abraham Eraly have treated such fortunate accounts with suspicion merely because prescriptions in legal literature, largely comprising of the Smritis, reflected a more(prenominal) insecure and harsher society. This could either show that these foreign travellers were all fanciful in their writings on ancient India or that these sacred texts played a very minimal role in governing the Hindu substance of life. Apart from the absurdity of the suggestion that a traveller would lie in praise of a foreign land, the later scenario appears more probable because of around other very interesting facet of ancient Hindu society- minimal resign interference in the daily life of a citizen. on that pointfore at that place was no overarching government administering a code of equitys or enforcing punishments to maintain law and order and prevent crimes. The codes of Manu, Katyayana or Narada were largely irrelevant to the common Hindu. There appears to have been a latent realisation that the State and its laws are inherently incapable of creating a crime- separated society and the onus for this has to rest more topically perhaps even on the one-on-one. And it is this realisation that has to dawn in straight offs India. The realisation that 12000 plus police stations in any(prenominal) 7 lakh towns and villages cannot regulate over 110 crore people.Prof. Werner Menski, in his seminal work on Hindu Law (Hindu Law beyond Tradition and Modernity, Oxford University Press, 2003), explains the Hindu view of dealing with cri mes close accurately. He writes that condescension the recognition of fall in human values from the golden uttermost of early ages, law and punishment in the late classical layover were never used to displace self-control as the primary hearty norm. He writes-The conceptual expectation of self-controlled order in classical Hindu law would have empowered, in principle if not in practice, all Hindus to determine for themselves, as individuals subject to the highest order, what they should be doing. A rulers claim to make what Hart called primarily rules could never have develop in such a conceptual climate, since in the classical Hindu systems such basic rules were to be cultivated in the social domain and should then be implemented locally and individually in self-controlled fashion.It would be quite wrong to assume that the traditional, classical reliance on individual and situational self-control was completely abandonedthreats of punishment of are not purely secularas most legal commentators have assumedtransgressions of Dharma are also seen as sins, which require penance and/ or attract posthumous consequences. (Emphasis supplied)Therefore, the recognition that the primary onus of adhering to Dharma is on the individual naturally meant that outdoor(a)/ societal interventions in the form of laws and punishments were superfluous in creating a crime-free society. The tenseness instead was on encouraging a Dharmic conscience among citizens.Prof. Menski explains the current relevancy of this idea- In this regard it is instructive to refer to the Dowry Prohibition mo of 1961 which is widely seen as an example of the futile attempts by the state law to abolish socio-legal practices in Indian societydisgusted with the horrible stand over thousands of dowry deaths every year, some women activists began to call for a example reappraisal. Yet, does this mean that the wheel of history should in fact be sullen be back to Asokas idealism?Postmodernist a nalysis recognises (albeit with some reluctance) that the old Hindu concepts of examining ones conscience (atmanastuti) and model behaviour (Sadacara) retain their relevance today. While some modernist commentators have tremendous impediment with this kind of approach, it cannot be just dismissed out of hand.What is needed in India today is a moral reappraisal on Dharmik lines. We Indians have draw to imbibe a worship. In the western conception of Individual immunity and liberty, godliness is a shackle. A variety of western thinkers including Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Marx joined cause in attacking allegiance to morality as something that thwarts individual flourishing or sustains certain unequal socio-economic relations. We have subconsciously adapted this attitude of amorality as a natural concomitant of individual freedom or free market without realising that unlike western morality which was fostered and sustained by the church and the State Bharatiyamorality is indi vidual-centric and freedom-enabling. It is also important to emphasise, especially in the current context, that our morality is entirely gender-neutral. A Dharmik society or Bharat will render most kinds of activism that we have seen after the Delhi gang rape, especially the feminist variety, redundant.India unfortunately has forgotten to teach its children Dharmic morality. The only moralities we have come to follow are freedom and success. Today we stand in awe of a man from Gujarat who create a great business empire apparently through unethical and morally-suspect means all in the name of his success. Seven centuries ago Marco Polo stood in awe of a different kind of Gujarati business men- the ordinary merchants of Lata who harmonise to the Venetial traveller are among the best and most trustworthy merchants in the founding for nothing on earth would they tell a lie and all that they say is true. Isnt this an example of the difference between India and Bharat?