North & South INDIA
An immense subcontinent full of beggars and mystery!
ΙNDIA
It would take a lot of time and too much talent to make this trip worthwhile. The experience of a trip to India is positive or negative shocking. An immense subcontinent full of beggars and mystery. It touches the 1 billion inhabitants with a desperate standard of living. Pity is terrifying and obvious everywhere. A slow progress in rising national income has been offset by population growth despite efforts to control births. Even in its worst dimention, INDIA is surrounded by a moral dimension with a "religious halo". The beggars are of every age and someone can meet them everywhere. Homeless people count over 2,000,000 in CABINETS. Often the streets have an overnight camp view, or encampment and are full of red “betel”, the drug of the poor. Non violence is a second nature for the Indians. Jeans are a heresy that promotes non violence in its most extreme form. They wear a gauze in front of the mouth, just like the surgeons, to avoid"killing" by inhaling the micro-organisms or wearing small bells on the ankles to warn the little animals to move away. They only drink filtered water and feed on dry plants only because they have no life. They believe not to God a creator, but that there is an endless circle like the one who alternates the seed with the tree and the tree with the seed. Ascetic, calm, peaceful and sweet personalities. The fact of death in INDIA does not have the tragic character of the Christian world. Death is not seen as a detachment from life but as an internal episode of life. Parchists, lovers of Zoroaster, conduct in Mumbai a macabre ritual around the "Tower of Silence" where in the heart of a big city they give their dead northern hills to the vultures and their ravens end them up. The country of hunger has the largest number of cattle in the world. The slaughter of the cow is for Hindus the same crime as homicide. The most noticeable difference between Indian and Western civilization is in dealing with "neighbour". Between non-violence and the denial of our neighbour we could define it as the principle of non-intervention. Starting from the reincarnation: it reflects the general principle that the incarnation of the individual is a punishment, a separation from the EVERYTHING, the god. Separation carried out through a little or very painful (depending on the individual's behavior) chain until the final release. The punishment of the flesh takes place through a range of differences that include the entire animal scale from the inferior to the superior species according to an evolution that concerns only the individual and no one else. The level of successive reincarnation depends on the person's behaviour in life. The better the behaviour was, the higher the species someone becomes after the incarnation. At this point the key factor is that the Indian does not help his neighbour, for the same reason that he does not kill a cockroach. Both of them are moments of atonement for crimes of the previous reincarnation. They are the ransom for the final release to which no one is allowed to intervene. Christianity contains a principle of common morality, the semen of all socialisms, while in Hinduism, the EVERYTHING leads to a lonely relationship between man and god. Gandhi's appearance marks a deep renewal of Indian life. They called him Christ of INDIA. His message was a message of fraternity and equality (considering the moral inequality reflected in the caste system). His most revolutionary feature was that he transformed the spirit of Hinduism (non-violence) into an instrument of political and social intervention. However, the philosophy of today's rulers is "Westernized", so that India is considered as a nuclear power. Hinduism and Extermination One can see a sight in all his ugliness along the sanctuary of Ganges in Benares, the sacred city of INDIA and now VARANASSI. Seated or standing, beggars, mutilated, tuberculous, sick, are sitting close to each other, in the waters that are not clear and brown in colour. In the same waters that they wash their mouth, the corpses are washed (which burn publicly along the banks of the river) and wash the wounds without any worry. It is an archaic preschool hygienic, reflecting the conservative inertia of Hinduism, passivity, silence, and the attavistic atheism towards destiny. The Sacrament of Windows "Sati" The habit of burning a widow alive in the fire of the spouse was for centuries one of the obligatory element for someone who would like to write something about India: the macabre ceremony was part of the scene of a mythical and harsh India. However, let us consider that much information came to us about the mythical East was due to fantasies, the "sati" was unfortunately a reality. As you can imagine, this sacrifice was not a rule for widows, but an exception even frequent, that habit it was spread only in the upper castes, especially in the military and in the courts of the rulers, and that women were excluded during the pregnancy period, and those who had to raise children. Basically, sati was a voluntary sacrifice: no one could force the widow to make that fatal decision, even if the relatives and priests were trying to convince her, for the honor of the family,by promising joy in the other life and continual glory on earth. In British India the sati was banned by the English in 1829. Another impressive thing is the fervor of the phalaic worship. Ligam is of phallic shape of various sizes and material, and it is found everywhere. The religious temple of Love is well known and famous, where wood-carved beams represent erotic acts in many variations without any sophistication. Hinduism recognizes only one god Brahman or the ultimate spirit. At the same time, however, it recognizes 330,000,000 divinities, which are none other than the various representations of the only god. The pursuit of absolute by ascetics and philosophers rejects the rituals, the processions, the purifications, that is, the spectacles, sometimes picturesque and sometimes horrific of the masses' religiosity. Because the absolute awe can be explained and depicted by the philosophers, the simple souls embrace another stunning aspect of Hinduism, idolatry, a kind of Hindu Olympus. |