Culture and Warfare - Finding Balance Through Dharma

H. G. Wells, more than a hundred years ago wrote ‘The Time Machine’ in which he encapsulated the whole dilemma of civilization and barbarism. Wells describes a future where the difference between the barbarians and the cultured has become so acute - that they have become two species:

• The civilized, the Eloi, have all the comforts and luxuries of culture and civilization, they enjoy arts and aesthetics. They live a plush life; however, violence and war has been completely eliminated from their lives and even their physical appearance has become diminutive, akin to their lifestyle. Alarmingly, they have lost all ability to defend themselves, too, because of this intentional shunning of violence. Fear is a distinct emotion they experience helplessly, as they are individually and periodically hunted and preyed upon during new moon nights.

• On the other hand, are the barbarians, the Morlocks, who have no benefit of arts, culture, aesthetics and no finer rewards of life. In fact they have become asura-like in appearance, because war is all they have. They have destroyed all semblances of civic society and their life is total war, just like Jihad. As a result, they have become extremely powerful, huge and undefeatable in war. Moreover, they can very easily destroy the cultured and civilized Eloi.

This frames the dilemma of civilization. Chinese culture was defeated by the barbaric Mongols. Rome was destroyed by Huns and the barbaric Christians. Persia, the greatest of civilizations, was destroyed by barbaric Arabs. India was laid waste to by Islamic hordes. And America will fall to the woke brigade.

Wherever culture becomes too soft, it actually becomes a facilitator of barbarism

On this note, there is a wise dictum by Śrī Nisargadatta Maharāja:

Good becomes bad and bad becomes good, by its own fulfillment.

That is to say, anything stretched too far becomes the exact opposite. Gandhian non-violence leads to genocide of Hindus. Buddhist ahimsa led to multiple genocides all over Buddhist countries. Western hypersensitivity towards war will result in the West being taken over by barbarians - whose lifestyle is the permanent state of war, total war, jihad.

Dharma, always, is balance

Culture is protected by men who hold the sword in one hand and paintbrush in the other. It is defended by those who can sing paeans to the beauty of a spring flower blooming in court, and the next day cut off heads and limbs of enemies in the battlefield. Culture is preserved also by those women who can suckle newborns with one hand and wield a sword with the other. This is why Goddess Kālī would seem bībhatsa only to someone who sees Her through a rudimentary and binary lens. She is beautiful because she is ferocious - and that is how almost all our gods are in different ways. Our temples depict them with such diverse āyudhas in their many hands. In one hand a book, and another a sword. Even Sarasvatī Devī has a form known as Mātaṅgī who is ferocious and warlike.

This is not only the law of culture and civilization but the law of life, too.

There is rarely anything more exquisite in life than good literature, good art and writing – the act of creation itself. Yet, equally important is the fight and defense of all that is good, in whatever way possible, by increasing one’s awareness of the enemy - one’s Śatrubodha.

Many are not able to comprehend how a single person can write on temples and culture, and simultaneously also elaborate on the horrors, barbarity, and violence which lie at the core of Islam and Christianity..

In this however, there is no contradiction.

This balance is exactly how life is.

Fire and rain.

Always.

At the same time.

And it is the contrast between them that makes life enjoyable.

It is this balance between the two which makes life dharmic

As the Japanese saying goes:

To defend the good in this world, good men who are more cruel than the evil men are needed.

Which brings us to a curious and concerning condition -

The Saruman Syndrome

In The Lord of the Rings, a good wizard named Saruman studies the ways of the Other, the evil king Sauron. Unfortunately, Saruman becomes so fascinated with the other side that he eventually becomes one of them. This is the Saruman Syndrome.

Saruman had utmost Śatrubodha, but no Svayambodha- and thus he turned into the enemy

The Saruman Syndrome is this tendency to become the enemy by studying him so closely, but doing this without any foundational base in one’s own identity - without Svayambodha.

This is why Svayambodha is also necessary.

Svayambodha is the pole star, the sacred center of dharma, which always keeps guiding us as to our identity - who we are, what home is, and what the universal and eternal isl, from which we should never deviate.

Śatrubodha is that boundary which helps us know who we are not, and in the process defend the sacred center.

Both are necessary.

To become more powerful than Islamic terrorists is non-negotiable.

To not turn into them is also non-negotiable.

To walk that line of balance is dharma

Thus, it is not the ideal condition for us to have the ‘advantage of Pakistan over India’ as Pakistan engages in total war, jihad. Morphing ourselves into barbarians, like them, is not the solution. For theirs is a society which is capable of killing 165 children, in a genocide of children in a school. That society is not worth living in.

On the other hand, if we become too soft and ‘cultured’, where we completely avoid the gory, the bloody, the violent parts of life - then we simply invite the barbarians to come and destroy everything and everyone that we have ever loved and created.

So let us walk the path of dharma like always. Just like Arjuna did not hesitate in killing his own brothers and even teachers, after hearing the upadeśa of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Avoid war at first, but if war is approaching you or at your doorstep - do not hesitate to take appropriate action.