1) I’m sure many of you watched the recent taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show where her guest was Tommy Hilfiger. On the show, she asked him if the statements about race he was accused of saying were true.
Statements like’…’If I’d known African-Americans, Hispanics, Jewish and Asians would buy my clothes, I WOULD NOT have made them so nice. I wish these people would NOT buy my clothes, as they are made for upper class white people.’

His answer to Oprah was a simple ‘YES’.
Where after she immediately asked him to leave her show.

There is a suggestion emerging from this incident – Don’t buy your next shirt or perfume from Tommy Hilfiger.
Let’s give him what he asked for. Let’s not buy his clothes, let’s put him in a financial state where he himself will not be able to afford the ridiculous prices he puts on his clothes. BOYCOTT TOMMY HILFIGER. Stop buying any range of their products like perfumes, cosmetics clothes, bags, etc.
Let’s pass this message to non-white people and see the result of unity. Let’s find out if we “Non-Whites” really do play such a small part in the world.

2) This scene took place on a British Airways flight between Johannesburg and London .

A White woman, about 50 years old, was seated next to a Black man.
Obviously disturbed by this, she called the air Hostess. ‘Madam, what is the matter,’ the hostess asked. ‘You obviously do not see it then?’ she responded. ‘You placed me next to a black man. I do not agree to sit next to someone from such a repugnant group. Give me an alternative seat.’
‘Be calm please,’ the hostess replied. ‘As almost all the places on this Flight are taken, I will go and see if another place is available.’ The Hostess went away and then came back a few minutes later. ‘Madam, Just as I thought, there are no other available seats in the economy class. However, we still have one place in the first class.’
Before the woman could say anything, the hostess continued: ‘It is not usual for our company to permit someone from the economy class to sit in the first class.
However, I spoke to the captain and informed him of the situation.
Hence, given the circumstances, the captain feels that it would be scandalous to make someone sit next to someone so disgusting.’
She turned to the black guy, and said, ‘Therefore, Sir, if you would like to, please collect your hand luggage, a seat awaits you in first class.’
At that moment, the other passengers who were shocked by what they had just witnessed stood up and applauded.

Both the above are true stories. If you are against racism, please spread this message to all your like-minded friends.
‘A Humble Request – Please do not Delete this without sending it to at least one person’

Today, standing in the balcony, I saw a school bus full of cute little children dressed as Santa. This small moment refreshed all the childhood memories when Christmas was the much-awaited festival. That day, we went to school without making any excuses, with our eyes filled with hopes of getting chocolates from the Santa. That jingle bell chorus and decorating trees for the welcome of Santa was the happiest moment. A bar of single chocolate from the Santa made our day and we all made a wish list to be fulfilled by Santa.

Childhood was so wonderful, I wish I could relive it. Walking down the memory lane I realized how the festivals have just become holidays and how we all have just forgotten their real meaning. December 25, celebrated across the globe as the birth of the Son of the God, Jesus Christ, who was born to mother Mary and father Joseph at Bethlehem. The holy soul was sent to earth to spread the message of love and peace to humans and save us from the sins and sorrows.

Christmas is the festival of joy, happiness, peace, love, and forgiveness All over the globe this festival is celebrated with great enthusiasm. The houses are cleaned, delicious delicacies are served with people coming together to celebrate this pious occasion leaving behind all their differences. Christmas trees are decorated and gifts are exchanged to show affection and love towards each other. The whole city and the church are turned into heaven. While adults are busy with their decorations and exchanges, innocent children make their wishlist, keep them in the socks beside the Christmas tree and wait for their Santa Claus to fulfill their wishes.

But with the outdoor preparations, we usually tend to forget the real essence of the festival. The dazzle of the outdoor decoration makes us blind to the real meaning of the customs followed for the celebrations. As Christmas arrives we all start cleaning and decorating our houses and churches. Preoccupied with the cleaning of houses, we often forget to cleanse our souls. This Christmas let’s cleanse our souls of greed and hatred before putting any decoration on the entry gate. Let’s throw away all the bitterness and the negative thoughts before throwing away the used and old clothes away. Let us welcome people with open heart and cleanse our hearts of all the malice of the past. If we decorate our souls with the shimmer of positive thoughts, good heart, and love for everybody, we would be one step closer to the God and lay the foundation of the beautiful tomorrow we all had one imagined in our childhood.

Christmas tree is believed to attract positivity and keep the negative vibes away. It is not just the Christmas tree which attracts positivity, God has blessed us with the mother earth to take care of all our needs. But we have left no stone unturned to exploit the nature for our greed and selfish needs. Christmas not only teaches us to live in harmony with each other but also teaches us to live in harmony with the mother earth. Let this Christmas be the starting of the new era where we all take a pledge to respect all that is around us and make this earth a greener and cleaner place to live in.

Now, Santa Claus. We all have spent our childhood making our wish list and have slept changing sides and waiting for morning to see our gifts and wishes be granted. Now we all grown up, after the reality hit us hard, know that there is no Santa Claus to fulfill our wishes. But what we do not realize is that we all are our lives, Santa Claus. Let this Christmas we forgive ourselves and give ourselves the gift of a better version of ourselves with good hearts and compassion for others. Let us be the Santa for the people in need and grant them their wishes of a better lifestyle. Let us be grateful to God for the beautiful gift of life, wisdom, and mind and use this wisdom for the betterment of society.

Today’s world is not different from the world when Jesus was born. We all live in a world filled with hatred, ignorance, greed, and superstition. We all are children of the Almighty God. This little realization and a small amount of effort can turn our world into a better place to live in. A place where everybody is treated with respect and equality. A place where peace prevails and we all live in harmony with each other. Let this Christmas bring happiness and smile on the faces of people who are less blessed and we all pray to the Almighty God to bless us and take care of us. Let us put all our faith in God and spend our lives working for the other children of God. In the end, I would like to quote Jesus Christ:

“For what shall profit a man, if he gained the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul”

 

-Chainika Tanwar

There are so many gifts
Still unopened from your birthday,
There are so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to you by God.
The Beloved does not mind repeating: ‘Everything I have is yours.’
Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend if we break into a sweet laughter when your heart complains.
Ages ago every cell in your soul
Capsized forever into this infinite golden sea.
Indeed a lover’s pain is this sleeping,
When God just rolled over and gave you
Such a big good morning kiss!
–Hafiz tr. Daniel Ladinsky in ‘The Gift: Poems By Hafiz’ (Penguin).
Hafiz is underrated and eclipsed by Jalaluddin Rumi. Even virulently Islamophobic discourses and persons, adore Rumi. Whereas, Hafiz is the underrated Sufi, the forever second fiddle to Mevlana Rumi.
The first lines are priceless: the need for loving appreciation of the many unopened gifts and hand-crafted presents from the divine Beloved/Friend.
However, many of us whine and complain about what we don’t have, as opposed to gratitude for the many unopened gifts and hand-crafted presents–our talents, our bodies, our fluid genders and sexualities, our laughter and our love–to mention a few.
Hafiz goes on to talk about every metaphorical cell ‘of the soul’. capsized in the golden sea of divine love ages ago.
The last lines are unrivaled in literature–I cannot think of anyone except for Rumi and Rilke who communicate such easy intimacy with God so fluently and well.
Cute metaphor: the Beloved rolling over in bed to give us a good morning kiss–fast asleep in our own separateness and self-pity, we don’t feel it!

–Raj Ayyar

But then I realize it isn’t the outside world that is a whirlwind; it’s only my mind.

The world has never complained about how busy it is! There is a famous Buddhist saying that everyone appears as Buddhas in the eyes of a Buddha, and everyone appears as a pig in the eyes of a pig.

It is suggested that the world is experienced according to the state of one’s mind. When your mind is joyful and compassionate, the world is, too.
When your mind is full of negative thoughts, the world is, too. When your mind rests, the world also rests.

–Haemin Sunim: The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down.
So often, Zen Buddhism is stereotyped as an abrasive, rude form of wake-up therapy.

Certainly if one confines Zen to the more shocking, paradoxical koans, that stereotype has some truth to it.
LIke the Vietnamese Thich Nhat Han, the contemporary Korean Zen monk Haemin Sunim soothes us into deep restfulness through his words and the breath-pauses between the words.
I find myself turning the pages of the book when I am feeling stressed-out, anxious, angry or plain tired.

Sunim has a gently nurturing mentor presence that can slow you down, to where you then accomplish all that you need with effortless ease.
–Raj Ayyar

A HOMAGE  TO  KIMATRAI BAHARMAL KHUSHALANI

 Bringing to you the Late Shri Kimatrai Baharmal  Khushalani’s  essay UTILITY OF HONESTY IN TRADE. Priced two annas, published in 1936, this essay was awarded a Gold Medal  based on an All India competition held in 1934. Readers will find that the essay is as relevant today as it was then. We begin with a foreword which was published along with the essay – Editor

A  Foreword  by
S. G.  Sastry Esq.,  B. A.t  M. Sc.  (Lond),  F. C. S.,
Director of Industries  and  Commerce  in  Mysore.
THE DHARMA  SAMAJA
BANGALORE   CITY., 1936.
Price: Annas 2
[All Rights  Reserved.]

FOREWORD

I welcome the opportunity afforded to me by. the Secretary of the Dharma Samaja, Chickpet, Bangalore City, to write a foreword to the Prize Essay on the subject of “Utility of Honesty in Trade”  by Mr. K. B. Khushalani. BE

The Dharma Samaja is being conducted by an enthusiastic group of young men who feel that there is an ever growing need for conducting trade and commerce of the country in the true and ancient spirit of the “Vanik Dharma.” This harkening back to the old traditions and ideals is a good sign amongst the youth of the country and should be welcomed and encouraged in all ways

Owing to changes in the political and economic conditions of the people, traditional and time-honoured ways of carrying on trade and commerce of the country  have   undergone many changes, alas, for the worse.

Now-a-days the spirit of fair-play in commercial transactions is lacking. The mutual trust that ought to exist between the buyer and seller is absent. As of old, the buyer and seller make offers and counter-offers but in many instances bargaining degenerates into cheating. Either the buyer or the seller always tries to take a mean advantage over the other. Once upon a time, the motto of commercial transactions used to be ‘ Good value for money – This is no longer the rule.

One often finds in transactions between two countries especially if one of them is more advanced than the other the former country exploits the ignorance and helplessness of the latter country to the utmost and charges unconscionably high rates for goods supplied. Importers of machinery and other equipment in India know this too well.

One of the most regrettable forms that this cheating has assumed is the adulteration of goods offered for sale. I do not state that this is peculiar to India only but so long as it does exist in this country, it must be taken note of and attempts made to eradicate the evil. Once upon a time this evil was rampant in all our staple exports to foreign countries but it is gradually on the decline owing to legislation in some cases, owing to the realisation on the part of the exporters that it does not pay to adulterate commodities, and also owing to inferior position allotted to such commodities in International markets along side with similar commodities from other countries. There is also an increasing moral pressure being exercised by those who believe in a fair deal.

But nearer home, in all our markets – small or great – the evil of adulteration of foodstuffs is on the increase. This is nothing short of a criminal practice and ought to be put down ruthlessly by legal and other methods. Whereas the mixing of cotton with woollen goods or cotton with silk goods or mixing silk and Rayon and pass off the articles as real 100 per cent woollen, real 100 per cent silk, etc. may not have such consequences, the adulteration of foodstuffs  strikes  at

the  health  of the community itself.  Whatever may  have been the genesis of this situation, so long as it exists it is high time that the Government took early steps to put down the evil-   It  is  unnecessary  to  enumerate  cases  of  such adulteration as every householder will  be able  to prepare a long list.

One special field in which adulteration becomes a positive sin should be mentioned. This relates to drugs and medicines. Anybody who is inclined to go through the Drug Enquiry Committee Report will find ample recorded evidence of so called medicines sold in the markets not being medicines at all. It is regrettable that scientists have abused their knowledge in some instances and are committing the unforgivable sin of tampering with and adulterating medicines which are meant to alleviate human distress and save human lives. Such deceit could be, to some extent, controlled by drastic legislation but that cannot be expected to prevent fraud in trade for ever as man-made laws cannot be fool proof. But even here, unfortunately, India is lagging behind the other countries which have enacted stringent legislative measures to punish such people by award of deterrent sentences. Unscrupulous foreign merchants knowing full well that their crime goes undetected in India for lack of laboratories and further goes unpunished for lack of legislation in the matter have been running “amock” as it were, in Indian markets and label all sorts of fraudulent preparations as potent medicines which not only do not cure the disease but impoverish the poor and ignorant public.

The best security against such practices is a high sense of morality among the manufacturers and traders themselves. If “Honesty as a faith” does not appeal to one and all, at least “Honesty as a policy” ought to be the guiding factor in all our economic transactions. The Trade Guilds of our country and the Graff and Merchant Guilds of mediaeval Europe exercised a powerful influence on their members dealings and one would wish for the revival of this “Guild’ Spirit” through the modern trade organisations. Enlightened public opinion based on a high sense of morality is the best guarantee for the protection of the public against commercial frauds. The members of the Dharma Samaja have in this direction a rich field for effective and enduring social service.

I do not want the foreword to be longer than the text itself and I should draw a line at this point. I wish the Dharma Samaja and all the enthusiastic workers connected with it every luck and success in their endeavours. Their work is not easy but they must carry on with a missionary spirit and try their level best to see that the trade and commerce of the country are carried on in the true spirit of ancient “Vanik Dharma“.

S. G. SASTRY,
Director Of Industries And Commerce In Mysore.
Bangalore, (21st September 1956)          

UTILITY OF HONESTY IN TRADE
HONESTY THE BEDROCK OF SUCCESS
An award winning essay by K.B. Khushalani

1. Honesty, more natural than dishonesty

The fundamental principles of Human Existence are Truth and Honesty, for, everybody is more honest than dishonest; the   greatest liar utters more truths than lies. This is part of the general fact that there is more goodness in the World than badness or Evil, though occasionally we find appalling crimes, which are rather aberrations or freaks and do not proceed from the intrinsic nature of the World. In fact, a perfect liar is really a ‘ truthful man”, for, we can then always. say that truth must be other than what he speaks. By a liar we mean an occasional liar, and he is really a dangerous man. So is it in the case of Honesty- By a dishonest man we al­ways understand one who is occasionally dishonest. Thus honesty is more natural than dishonesty, and that is why it betrays its nature from beneath the darkest cloaks, and we can’t once suspect that the man is dishonest. It is exactly because of the same reason that crimes are detected, for, every hap­pening leaves its traces, and, try as we may, we will not be able to hide them. Again that which is natural is beneficial, for it works in a graceful manner; and honesty, when allowed its free play, works wonders, specially in the long run. In trade; one has to depend on the good-will of many, and honesty is the best means to the end. Honesty should be practised in all walks of life; it is a strength and a support in all matters of routine; it has all advantages and only one apparent dis­advantage, that sometimes one feels that there is loss, but really that  is temporary and   in   many cases only apparent.

There are often trials and, when one successfully stands them, he comes out nobler and brighter. Every trouble means a fur­ther rise, and the greater the opposition it offers in surmounting, the better are its results. The fruit is simply delayed, but never denied, and if and when withheld longer, it is paid with in­terest. One has only to be patient and watching; he should muster up courage and should never be disheartened. All obstacles are meant for training; they are cleverly designed and intentionally set, each for its purpose, and each variant in design, and different in colour to suit the particular case. All this is for Honesty generally; in trade, its results are direct, cheap and comparatively earlier than elsewhere.

2. Trade differentiated from other occupations as regards honesty.

Trade is different from other occupations, in that its, adherent is independent. It is his merit alone that counts; he is the master of the situation, controlled only by market rates. It is a profession peculiar in it­self. In spite of the trader’s dealings with many people of different temperaments, for whose pleasure and custom he has to strive constantly which he can do better by honesty rather than by dishonesty, he can remain independent and can main­tain his self-respect fully well. Of course, there are some people always and everywhere, who can never be pleased by any means, honest or dishonest. As they are few and far between, they should never be bothered about, and it is always preferable to ignore their custom rather than hanker after them.

 

3. Businessman   should fulfill   his part of   duty

The relationship of the customer and the merchant is one in which are involved  the interests of   both.   The  former wants   supply of good articles  at a reasonable price,   while the latter is after the custom  of the former; and the maintenance of the tie depends upon both   the reasonableness of the one and the honesty   of the   other.    The   businessman, who   wants to establish himself well, should fulfil his   duty and the customer will automatically do his.    Granting that men are   unreasona­ble,  yet it in no  way   pays   the   dealer to   be   dishonest with them, though  we   should   consider the   average   buyer who is seldom unreasonable in his demands.    In case a purchaser ex­pects too much concession,   it should be explained to him for an amicable deal, as few would grudge the fair profits of a dealer. It is only when a dealer   sets   his   prices unreasonably   high that he does not like to explain his   position.    Explaining the position is not disposing   trade   secrets, which   are as dear to  any  one else, and principles of honesty  do not their  revelition.    The   position of the buyer is slightly superiot to that of the   seller in the respect   that the choice of choosing his suppliers is in his hands; and this is a further rea­son for the seller to   adapt his behaviour in accordance with the likes and dislikes of the buyer.    None will or can say that any purchaser ever wants his supplier to be dishonest to him. From the time he enters the   shop or   negotiates by   corres­pondence, his pleasure   is to be considered   supreme, and it is the duty of the dealer to see that   he gives no   cause for any suspicion.    But, as the face is the index to the mind, he can­not successfully do it unless he practises honesty.   Customers are free birds, they cannot be tied down to one shop unless-there is something to attract them, and the best that the-owner of the shop can offer is his sincerity.

4. Dishonest tricks practised by the Seller and their detrimental effects.

The kind of honesty  expected  from   the trader is :—

                     (i) Honesty in talk

(a) While recommending his articles to his customer he should neither exaggerate their qualities, nor assign to them any­more qualities than they possess, and

(b)    He should   not at   the   same time,   speak low of others’ articles,  but   should restrict  himself only to praising his own.

                     (ii) Honesty in rate

He should keep his rates fixed   once and for all.    The tendency to snatch   as much from the other party as possible is counterproductive and creates suspicion in the mind of the customer

A prudent businessman should avoid flexible rates, he should  see that the rates are in fair  level with the market price. Of course no two traders can keep the rates of all articles the same; it is just like saying, that no two watches tally exactly, and if they do at all, they cannot continue to do so for long; yet as much of standardization as can possibly be attained should be aimed at.

                       (iii) Honesty in samples.

Dishonesty- in this   can   be of   two kinds. Some dealers show samples from the best lot, they want to sell but quote prices   for   the    inferior  articles;   others choose as their sample  the best of the  lot they want to  sell,

but the sample does not represent the average of the stock. Both practices are decidedly not good and should be discouraged; it is only a question of  degree as between them, the former being worse, and the latter bad.

                       (iv) Honesty in Supply

(a)     It is a practice   with   many   dealers   to   show one article as a sample and supply   another an inferior one. Some of them maintain great differences in the qualities and some keep less. The former are ruled out at the first stroke by the purchaser in his choice and they seldom continue as traders for long, whereas the latter carry on, but cut no good figure. Thus, the latter class of people exist for exigencies only.

{ b ) Some of the dealers again put in a few bad things in the lot; they either take undue advantage of the purchaser’s weakness, or think that he would not take the trouble of returning the articles. If at all he does try to return, they reserve to themselves the choice of accepting them, and, in almost all cases, refuse to take back. This audacious abuse of confidence is very bad and detrimental to the interests of the dealer.

 

The kind of honesty  expected  from   the trader is :—

5. Honesty in maintaining books

 

It is a habit with many merchants to maintain duplicate books, vouchers, bills etc. Duplicate books vouchers are maintained to cheat either the Income Tax Authorities or debtors and creditors, the debtors when they are illiterate and the creditors at the time of insolvency; whereas duplicate bills are shown to customers as a proof of quoted cost prices. These’ bills are prepared either by the merchant or his supplier who-is requested to show higher prices than actual. Another trick is sometimes played, the supplier being asked to show true prices but not the commission on the bill. This is justified by some people on the ground that commission is meant solely and entirely for the trader, and the purchaser has no-business with it. But in the true sense of the word it can be justified only when the trader plainly tells his customer that he receives a certain commission, the extent of which he cannot disclose. -The act of cheating the Income Tax Department puts Government to heavy loss, which is usually counteracted by revision of rates by Government, and the burden is. borne ultimately by these who do not, or by both. Besides, if once caught, they are heavily penalised.

The fact of anybody declaring himself insolvent, after setting aside certain properties for himself and having prepared false books for submission to Court, never remains a secret. and is often proved in the Courts of Law. In those cases, however, where sufficient evidence is not available to pin the dishonesty, there is a definite judgment against him in the business world, where each individual weighs his action the balance and finds himself wanting. Such a man  loses the confidence of the mercantile class, and everybody tries to keep him at a distance and hesitates to deal with him.

6. Honesty in general not covered by the above five cases

All these practices are bad; they are enumerated in the order of increasing importance and should be avoided by every businessman who .wants to expand his business. The traders who practise them are shortsighted, for they look to the immediate and not to the

 permanent gain. They do not understand that it is not a day’s business. If the public are  prejudiced against any dealer, the prejudice lasts for years, and may stand as a permanent  and indelible stain against his firm even though he be dead, and his posterity have to drudge heavily to wipe it off.

Remember: Dishonesty is detected always

All malpractices, deceitful tricks and other acts of dishonesty are bound to come to light some time; some are known on the very day and others later on. If one has praised his article too much and given it fictitious qualities, the truth will be known after use, when it will not stand the test. Dishonesty in the quality of materials, in samples, and in quantity is known the very moment the goods are received by the purchaser. One can

Befool one at all times

Or all at one time

But not all at all times.

Now-a-days the World has advanced considerably. Scientists are after speed; and are  providing all kinds of facilities with the result that the entire world is connected by Telegraph, Telephone and Wireless systems. Telepathy, and Television are abstract subjects no more. Every merchant worth the name keeps a Telephone instrument in his office, and market prices are being communicated to him every moment; therefore the chances of a big dealer’s cheating and being cheated in rates are remote. Besides, the present age is the age of specialization, and everybody knows the ins and outs of his field. He keeps up a thorough acquaintance with the rates and other information connected with  the commodities he deals in, and seldom allows himself to be cheated, if at all, and much  less by the same man twice. People do not hesitate to form opinions from a single instance, and that is what is being done. They do not want even to wait and defer judgment until a repetition occurs. If even from a distance they smell dishonesty, they would cut off their connection at once.

6. Efficacy of Low Profits

Every dealer should believe in low charges, ie. less profit and more custom (small profits and quick returns) and never in high profit which is bound to result in the long run in less custom – But whatever be his rates, they should be uniform, and then only can he be said to be honest.

7. Dealer should not play in quality

No dealer should play with quality; neither in toto nor in part, as the opposite party, failing to understand the dishonest intentions of the sender, forms an opinion, wrong though, that the general quality of his entire stock is bad.  This is detrimental to the reputation also of the manufacturer, who should see that no bad stuff leaves his factory. All the inferior output- should be forthwith sorted out and sold definitely at a low rate, not to the big merchants, but to the retail sellers. Better still would it be if each factory should create one or more shops, according to need, for the  purpose of selling such stuff under its direct guidance, so as to reduce the chances of  marring-its reputation-

8. In regard to the purchaser, the following are the acts
           of dishonesty performed by him.

(i)       If he sends for goods from two people dealing in the    same commodity, and perchance gets bad stuff from one who refuses to take it back, he tries to dump it on the other. This is a mean practice and is simply taking advantage of somebody’s goodness and reliance. In case the fact becomes known to him through the concerned supplier, as it generally happens, he is pained  at the trick of his customer, which naturally deters him from affording such facilities thereafter.

  (ii)      In the process of bargaining with a dealer he may falsely state that he is getting the same stuff cheaper, or better stuff at the same price from some other dealer, in order to compel him to reduce his rates. It is evident that the same trick cannot be repeated, and that it breaks the faith of his supplier.

(iii)    When the sample shown to him is really good, he generally disapproves of it or approves of it after higgle haggle, this is unfair. If he does not want to praise the article lest he should hear a high bid from him, he should keep silent. Such lies, like many other ones, can be avoided without any disadvantage, and, when one does not do so, he simply burdens his conscience for no gain.

9. Do as you wish to be done by.

Every trader is a purchaser and a seller at the same time, and should observe honesty in both the capacities. Unless he is an honest seller, he cannot be an honest buyer and vice versa. He should always keep in mind the maxim ‘Do as you wish to be done by ‘. This will guide him in both the lines, and when he feels that he has satisfied himself accord­ing to this test in both the ways, then only can he be called a successfully honest trader.

10. Quick rectification of bonafide mistakes increase confidence.

The trader should be honest in his accounts; if he has perchance committed a mistake in dispatching goods or preparing a bill,he should ,immediately he comes to know of it, correct it without waiting for its being   pointed out by   the other party.    Similarly, if   he   receives   any article   extra   or discovers a mistake in   account to   his   advantage,   he should forthwith point it out to his supplier.   Again, if perchance and through mistake, i.e. he has unintentionally charged some one higher rates, he should communicate the fact to that customer and credit the balance to his account or be prepared   to remit in   cash.       All    these    acts,    and    specially   the     last,   in­crease the   confidence   of his    supplier and   purchaser,   who-repay his goodness by advertising him among others.    This-evidently   brings him greater profit than he   would   otherwise have realized, for, in many cases, if he does not himself point it out , the other party does it, and claims the balance as a right..

11. The manufacturer and the consumer

There are two more classes of people who have dealings in trade, but are not traders. A trader necessarily is one who purchases certain goods and sells them at a profit. He is the middle man between the manufacturer and the con­sumer, the two classes of people under consideration. Both these have one sided dealings, the one sells and the other only purchases, and, because of their restricted dealings, they are not so tactful as the trader

The manufacturing class includes the artisan who prepares articles with his own hands on a small scale.  He is generally poor, and his business, like that of the manufacturer, depends upon the quality of the manu­factured articles.   He can retain his customers only if he continues using good raw materials and producing good stuff.

12. Psychology of the consumer

The consumer is a purchaser on a very small scale, but because of his existence in large numbers, he is the most important member of the trading circle, and, because every article has ultimately to go to him, his pleasure, and, choice is considered supreme. Both the manufacturer and the trader try to adopt their policy according to his taste. He purchases articles for his or his friends’ and relatives’ use. He wants good stuff and at a reasonable price; he frequents only those places where both these conditions are satisfied; and thus he always prefers an honest shopkeeper. He is reliant and will continue attending the same as long as nothing happens to break his faith which, if once broken, requires a very great effort to restore.  To make new customers, they say, is difficult, but to retain them is still more difficult.

Thus perpetual honesty is required to attract new customers and to retain old ones. Carelessness in this matter never pays the dealer, but will rather harm him. One may give away anything of one’s own accord or on demand, but never when he knows he is being cheated; he then feels much pain and many are actuated to revenge, when they know that they have been cheated. Further the consumer likes to make purchases from such shops as maintain fixed rates, for he is not a trader and naturally not so well versed in the line. Therefore be may not know the current prices of articles, especially of those that he occa­sionally requires. In a fixed-rate-shop he may have to pay a slightly higher price, but he feels sure that lie will not be cheated for a big sum, which is generally the case in shops where no uniform rates are charged, and where the shop-keeper tries to snatch as much as he can from the customer, the more so when he gets the clue that he has no definite knowledge of prices of the article.

The shopkeepers are usually clever enough to understand this at once from the manner of his enquiring. From what has been said above, it is absolutely clear that the shopkeeper can cheat the same man only once. A dishonest dealer can make successful business, when he gets every day new faces to deceive, and has to deal daily with different men not known to one another and not expected to meet one Another; or, if at all they meet’ they should not speak about the purchases made by them on that day or any of the previous days, so that everybody else remains in the dark and never knows about the dishonesty of the man unless he gets a chance to be cheated himself. This however, is an utterly impossible condition to realize. Or dishonesty may pay, where people are suppressed due to pres­sure of one’s superiority or where heads are corrupt; but such conditions do not exist in the business world, and where they exist, they never last long.

13. Honesty the best of all Qualities of a trader

As in other fields it is hard work and intelligence that establish a recruit, so in trade it is Honesty that can establish him. Cheerful temperament, a tendency to accommodate the customer in his choice and demand, agreeable manners, respect for the customer, self-respect and, last but not least. honesty in dealing are some of the qualities required for successful business, and, among them all, honesty stands Supreme, and makes up for all the deficiencies and defects of the trader. One needs to realize how difficult it would be if all people were dishonest; one could not then move an inch. One cannot then trust anyone with anything even for a  moment, nor can he pay him anything in advance.

14. False fears due to lack of self-confidence & experience

There is a general cry that the time for honesty is over, and that it is not valued now-a-days. There may be a grain of truth in the .statement, which amounts but to an acknowledgement of the struggle between honesty and dishonesty, or between truth and untruth which appears eternal, though. victory in the long run is never in doubt for honesty and truth. Under no case can dishonesty over-power honesty. Our fears against honesty are often merely theoretical, un- grounded, baseless and false. Our troubles are either; imaginary, self-created or self-invited. None of them that grumble against honesty has ever practised it, and never has he tasted the sweetness arising from it. His opinion is the opinion of others, who in turn cannot claim it as their own. Thus an idea, emanating from a few unworthy individuals, is passed on by several lips to several ears and obtains a strong grip over a large majority. A votary of dishonesty, when asked to state if he has put in serious efforts to follow up his trade by honesty or given a fair trial to it would certainly answer in the negative. People adopt the easiest course, they would like to go by the shortest route, they want to be rich in a day, and that is why they adopt dishonest means. The path of the honest dealer is weary in the beginning but joyful in the end, troublesome at the outset but easy in the long run, and tedious at the start but sure in due course. It is, of course, certain that he who starts his business on the lines of honest dealing will meet with opposition, but he should stand it bravely and every difficulty will melt away in due course leaving the way-clear for him. Generally every one who starts a new business meets with certain difficulties and obstacles: the success in the enterprise depends on the grit and tact of the actor. It is said that an honest man is offered more difficulties, but we should not at the same time forget that he has behind him, as an outcome of his honesty, a greater force to support him. This force is sure to succeed. The honest dealer may take long to establish, but when once established none can dislodge him. His success is lasting; the customers secured by him are permanent, and his profits regular, sure and more definite.

15. Honesty promotes, dishonesty impedes all business

Never can anyone lose in business because of his honesty, and when such a report is received, one can take it for certain that there must be some other defect or defects in the organization, and that were it not for honesty, the concerned party would have incurred greater loss and at a much -earlier date than otherwise, for, as said above, that which takes long to establish takes long to dwindle. Honesty in fact makes up for many defects in staff, in management, in organization and individual abilities; it protects from grave fears. Weak administration, careless management, deficient organization, expenditure disproportionate to income incurred for unnecessary show, squandering of money by responsible persons connected with the concern, improper investment, defective accounts and dishonesty on the part of some one or other are the salient causes of failures of business, heavy losses and bankruptcy. A majority of failures occuring in petty concerns are due to defective accounts, but a still higher proportion of failures in both petty and big concerns can be attributed to dishonesty. Dishonesty is a termite, a canker, a pest that can eat up the very tissue of any undertaking, retard its growth and finally destroy it in toto. It needs to be guarded against from the beginning to the end

 

16. Dishonesty – its effects on the employees

Dishonesty of the master induces the servant to be dishonest: it becomes a vicious circle ever widening itself by absorbing freshmen every day, and like an infectious disease catching hold of every one coming in contact- Every act of cheating by the employer produces a reflex effect on the employee, who, by his intimate contact with the former, is enamoured of the alluring gains easily got by the cut-short methods, and is tempted to adopt them for his personal benefit. He has none else to rob except his master; and he starts with double vengeance to make up for the time ‘uselessly passed in honesty’, he feels least for his master whose profession is cheating; and he knows that he has his share in the earnings of his master, which he wants to have over and above his pay as a reward; for sharing his sins and consequent smothering of his own conscience. The poor employer is doubly affected: his tricks-being sufficiently known by this time, his customers have started leaving him, and he finds his business on the wane on one hand, and on the other he is being robbed at home. He realizes his folly too late, or he may not realize it at all throughout his life. The vice invented by him has caught and entangled him. Similarly many partnerships have been ruined by dishonesty, If the same trader had put in all his efforts to prosper by honest means, he would surely have done better.

17. Causes of Occasional Thriving of Dishonest Men and Losing of Honest Men

 We have often seen a dishonest man thriving and honest man   losing.    We then   get   perplexed.  But let it be clear, that under such circumstances the dishonest man flourishes for his ability and skill and never for his dishonesty, while the honest man loses not for his professing honesty but for his incapacity, inefficiency and general weakness. If the former were to adopt honesty, in addition to his other qualities, he would thrive still more, and if the latter takes to dishonesty he would fall further. For fair comparison, either the same man or two equally competent men, or say nearly equal in qualities, should be made to start similar business under similar circumstances, but by different means, honest and dishonest, and it needs no prophet to say that honesty will bring betterprofits. Unfortunately the capable men are not. guided and trained in the honest methods with the result that they adopt the unnatural ones – which by its usage has become natural and easy or so-called easy course while weaklings who are really unfit to adopt any method, adhere to honesty for fear of being exposed, caught, or sent to gaol.

18. Honesty in Trade compared with Honesty outside

There is a vast difference in professing honesty in trade and elsewhere.  In trade it is easy. without complications, never harmful but always beneficial, whereas when followed outside trade, it invites opposition, entails trouble and requires greater nerve on the part of its adherent to stick to it. Though, even in the latter case, it is bound to lead to pros­perity, it may be a little later than expected. In trade it is in the interests of all those who have dealings with one another that everybody should be honest. Those who practise dishonesty do it for their sole personal gain which they wrongly think results from dishonesty. But, outside trade, there are certain spheres in which those having dealings with each other want one or the other party to be dishonest for their own personal and selfish benefit, and because of their pressure, some people are led into dishonesty. In trade it is entirely different, for, all the customers without a single exception will undoubtedly be pleased by their supplier’s honesty.

19. Extent of probable saving to the business world from wholesale honesty

To realize the utility of honesty it will be worth while to consider, what an amount of misery would be saved to the World, if dishonest men were removed from it. Of course, it is an Utopian idea, but is taken up here simply for argument’s sake. All auditing would then be unnecessary; accountants may remain, but auditors as a class would cease to exist. All watch and pro­tection against theft would be unnecessary. The World is spending millions merely and solely on watchmen and guards. Every individual has to adopt means to protect his property, and this too would be unnecessary. Dishonest men are a drag on the world, they are a drag on individuals and a drag on the merchant class as a whole.

20. Honesty the best policy

It is said that honesty is the best policy, and no­where is the significance of the saying so fully realized as in trade The Proverb is very expressive and important in the respect that it treats with the material side of honesty and lays no stress on its moral aspect. The enunciator of the proverb has made honesty stand on the merits of its use­fulness, and states it as a profitable policy, and all that has hitherto been stated is simply in expounding this maxim. Besides, all great men have emphasised its usefulness and they cannot all be wrong.

21.Scope of Honesty in moulding the future

Viewing things broadly we cannot help coming to the conclusion that our World is connected-with other lokas or worlds and that lives do not terminate here.  Each individual leads an eternal life of which the present one is but one out of many phases; its length or duration is but a tiny part of the Infinite whole. This is the scientific view of life and is not only accepted but propagated by great Scientists like Sir Oliver Lodge, the late President of the Royal Society of Science. That being so, it is but a logical conclusion that our actions will not only bear fruit here, but will mould our career in future births and effect our economic life there, as is the present moulded by the past Thus, even with a view to improve our future business career, we are required to be honest.

 

22. Honesty enhances social status and expands business

A dishonest man is held very low in the esteem of the society, and intimately connected as human beings are, we cannot for a moment disregard its opinion. Society can set aside any individual, it can non-co-operate with or do away with any undesirable fellow, but an individual cannot do so even though he may not like a particular society. Has not everybody seen the effect of social pressure in bringing round and moulding the worst type of people? Individuals have to submit to the social will, even though it be wrong; much more so, when it is right.  An honest man, who has established himself in the opinion of the public by his honest methods, finds himself safe in the hands of society, and his customers increase day by day. Every man attending his shop will bring a few more. Every trader has to depend upon the goodwill of his class and the general public, for the very word ‘trade’ means free transaction in commodities for mutual benefit. Thus honesty raises social status, which in turn expands one’s circle of acquaintance and increases his business.

23. National reputation affected by dishonesty

As individuals have to care for public opinion, for gaining which they put forth the most strenuous enorts that sometimes cost them their lives, so do nations have to care for and establish international reputation. Observance of honesty in international trade dealings is one of the most efficacious methods for maintaining such a reputation. A few fraudulent merchants are a blot on the nation ; they not only spoil their own case but prejudice all those who have dealings with them against the entire trading community of the nation they belong to. Besides, they create wrong impressions and false notions about their people, which, apart from affecting the international reputation of the country, gives a definite set-back to its trade with the consequent loss of revenue to Government and income to the people.  It is beyond the scope of this essay to suggest the methods necessary to be devised to guard against such dangerous people, but it will be sufficient to state here that all possible means should beadopted to prevent successfully any kind of dishonest tricks with outside merchants, and specially the habit of cheating in quantity or quality.

24. We should extend our vision to other classes of trading circles

The merchant or the shop-keeper spoken of so far is but typical of the business world. From wholesale dealers to the hawkers and pedlars, there are all grades and sorts included in this class. We have to think not only of him but extend our vision so as to include all business men from frequenters of stock exchanges to agents, brokers, touts, contractors and canvassers of every description, and from big hawkers on to the village ryot^[1] who is also seller and buyer.

 

25. Divine punishment^[1]

Folk stories about honesty and its benefits are told in every language. Poets and prose writers have eulogized on the one hand its charming effects and, on the other, censured dishonesty. The average man believes in them, but forgets them when the time for action comes. Nature adopts its usual methods and reminds him by some punishment; she has no power of speech, but has greater power to act, and so she teaches man by action and never by words. Every one of us must have heard of several cases of sudden fires, thefts, earthquakes and such other heavy calamities to individuals or classes or locali­ties. Sometimes one fails to unearth the cause, but often it is so apparent, manifest and definite that none can ever mistake it, and it is from such instances alone that men understand. Dishonesty, like all other bad qualities, brings its results and the punishment is as sure as Death. Man may for the time being rob others, and amass many treasures by thousands of tricks and dishonest methods, but nature snatches them with one stroke in a moment, exposing him and his acts mercilessly. The reason that honest dealers are also sometimes subject to such calamities deprives in no way honesty of its beneficial blessings, for it may be that they may have been penalized for some other crime of theirs, belonging to the past. It may also be that the punishment has been lightened, because of his professing honesty. lt should then be taken as. an admonition.

26. Religious injunction

Besides, there are commandments in every religion prohibiting cheating of others. Honesty talked of by all. religious books is really speaking honesty in trade, for all dealings in money and goods come under trade and we will not be far wrong in saying that general honesty means honesty in trade.

Summary

In a few words, honesty establishes business, helps in maintaining and expanding it; it leads to prosperity and peace of mind, enhances social status, international reputation and is sure in its effects though seemingly slow

THE END

The documentary shows man’s place in the Universe. It’s a reality check about what we think we are and what we actually are.

The Guru of the Razor’s Edge
by
Raj Ayyar

The search for a point of origin in Indian philosophy invariably leads to a dead end. Who was the first Indian philosopher? The question does not yield a nice, cosy answer. Western philosophy has a neat little point of origin in the tinkering and stumblings of those pre-Socratic savants, who were groping to define the world in terms of a single element. Western philosophy even boasts of a founding father in Thales, who sagely concluded that the world is made of water. However, when it comes to Indian philosophy, excavating its origin is far from easy.
History is inextricably interwoven with the mythopoetic in Indian tradition. Nor is this a shameful matter demanding that we compete with the historicity of Western traditions by looking for Yajnavalkya’s bones in the Rajasthan desert. What literalists in Hinduism and other faiths share with scientistic positivists is an obsession with literal verification. Literalists and positivists alike fail to recognize that the mythopoetic imagination is not inferior to a Gradgrindish world of ‘facts, facts, facts’. By privileging the latter, we easily substitute literalism for presence. The mythopoetic opens the doors of imagination, awakens us to a sense of wonder at the sheer miracle of being and allows us to play with archetypes without shackling them within the bounds of the verifiable. The metaphors in myth point to the presence and play of the sacred which can then be experienced through meditation, prayer and other methods.

Out of the rich mix of parable, dialogue, philosophy and metaphor in the Upanishads, one figure stands out mythopoetically as one of the great early philosophers and sages of ancient India. This is the personified form of death in Hinduism. Given the myth/history mix surrounding the origin in Indian thought, surely it is admissible to view Yama in the Katha Upanishad as one of the first philosopher-teachers of ancient India.

The figure of Yama is conspicuously different from many Western allegorical death personifications—for example, he is not the terrifying Grim Reaper. From the medieval morality play ‘Everyman’ to the intense, stark black & white metaphysics of Ingmar Bergman’s haunting ‘Seventh Seal’, Death is often personified in the West as the implacable adversary of life and of humankind. “You know you’re going to lose. Check!” Death tells Bergman’s knight, played by Max Von Sydow. They play a game of chess in a forbidding medieval castle, while the plague ravages the outside world as the Black Death. By contrast, Yama in the Katha Upanishad is a benign counselor, mentor and fire-testing teacher who is quite willing to initiate young Nachiketa into the mysteries of what lies beyond Death, once the young man has proved that he wants to go for broke and is not willing to settle for longevity, the companionship of apsaras and all the trappings of abundance.

What gives the Katha Upanishad its uniqueness is the portrayal of Death as a teacher rather than as the Enemy who snuffs you out. And yet, if Yama becomes the mentor and the benign guru of the razor’s edge between life and death, endless rebirths and immortality, it is entirely because of Nachiketa. It is the courage and integrity of Nachiketa that bring out the unlikely teacher in the Hindu god of death. Also, the Katha Upanishad never deteriorates into Yama’s boring dramatic monologue. This is due, in large part, to Nachiketa’s great independence and capacity for nay-saying. He is a thinking adolescent who refuses to cower, tremble or simply pay obeisance to death with superstitious fervor. He is a pleasant counter-example to centuries of Indian gerontocracy where children are meant to be docile and submissive to the supposed ‘wisdom’ of their elders.

Nachiketa is noticeably braver than Arjuna and the ‘Katha’ is considerably more dialogic than the Gita. As Professor P. Lal once remarked, the dialogue in the Gita stops with the Visvarupa. When Krishna reveals his cosmic form replete with mountains, rivers, planets, gods and asuras, poor Arjuna stares, mouth agape and knees knocking. Then he turns obsequious, apologizing for ever presuming to frame Krishna as friend and companion. One could even frame the Gita as essentially Krishna’s dramatic monologue, punctuated by occasional interjections and questions from Arjuna, barring the initial ‘Krishna, I will not fight!’ outburst. Once Krishna starts counselling the dejected Arjuna, the dialogue is over. The rest of the Gita is quite simply Krishna’s deft interweaving of Vedanta, Sankhya and Bhakti motifs into a marvelous multi-layered synthesis.

How does young Nachiketa find himself dialoguing with the great Yama-Dharma, the lord of Death? The prelude describes an interesting sequence of events leading to Nachiketa’s visit to the halls of Death. With the blunt integrity which is the privilege of some youth, Nachiketa sees through his father Vajashravasa’s political gesture to gain religious merit. Vajashravasa gives away cows that are doddering and “too old to give milk”, as gifts to the temple. He taunts Vajashravasa by asking him whether he too would be part of this ‘noble’ sacrifice. Nachiketa keeps bugging him till Vajashravasa snaps, “I’ll give you to Death!” As Eknath Easwaran points out, this may well be the ancient equivalent of an irritated parent today saying ‘drop dead!’ or ‘go to hell!’
Nachiketa thinks: “I go, the first of many who will die, in the midst of many who are dying”, on a mission to king Death.

Now, the text is beautifully non-committal about whether Nachiketa literally drops dead thanks to his father’s curse or whether his body remains in a state of suspended animation during his “mission” to King Death. If one were to hack away at the text literally, it makes no sense. We are told that Nachiketa is kept waiting by Yama for three days and then has this chat with him for who knows how long in human time. Had he died physically, the chances are that he would have been cremated days before his return. Was he resurrected from the ashes? The Katha Upanishad does not say. Such questions are meaningless, not because they fail to satisfy some literalist criterion of verifiability but because the entire Upanishad speaks to us from a mythic ‘as if’ dimension, not from a literalist ‘this is so’ one.

It’s interesting that Nachiketa’s ‘mission’ is so unique that Death is taken aback by finding a guest, who has waited for him for three whole days. The 20th century German philosopher Heidegger is one among many philosophers, who have underlined the ‘inauthentic’ human condition that flees death and creates obsessive routines of ‘everydayness’ to avoid the dread (and the authenticity) of encountering one’s own death. Whereas, Nachiketa boldly seeks out Death, only to find Him missing and has to wait for him!

One can imagine Death’s loss of composure at encountering this strange young man. Quickly regaining control of himself, Yama, in a rare gesture of divine generosity, offers him three boons by way of compensation. Despite his questioning temperament, Nachiketa proves to be an affectionate son. So, his first request is restoration of harmony with his father. Yama assents to this easily enough, arguing that Vajrashravasa would be overjoyed at seeing his beloved son released from Death’s jaws. The second boon relates to knowledge of the Fire Sacrifice which guarantees one longevity, peace and great happiness in Heaven. Many have argued that the true Fire Sacrifice is internal, sacrificing one’s many chattering ego desires to the Agni within. This boon is easily granted. The third boon is the pivot on which this whole Upanishad turns. Yama (comparable here to an amiable Arabian Nights genie) asks his unexpected guest to choose wisely, as this is the last of the wishes. Nachiketa boldly asks his host to teach him the truth of what lies beyond death. Yama is secretly pleased with the courage and wisdom of his young interlocutor. He decides to fire test him to see if he’s really worthy to receive this priceless gift. Unlike Bergman’s Death in the Seventh Seal, Yama is willing to divulge the secret provided the questioner deserves the answer. Yama tells Nachiketa that this is a question that has baffled the wise through the centuries. He tempts the young man with longevity, health, wealth and all the ‘stuff’ that mortals seek feverishly. It is a measure of Nachiketa’s tough nay-saying integrity that he doesn’t want the apsaras, the cows and horses or the sensuous feast spread out for him by Death.

His argument is simple: these pleasures are short-lived. Even a long life ends ultimately in the arms of death. Death is highly impressed by his new-found pupil and initiates him into the mysteries of immortality.

He points out that the vast majority of humans, lured by the transient take the glittering path of Preya, chasing the delights of the senses and therefore condemned to an endless cycle of death and rebirth. This regressive cyclicality from one death to the next is never condemned as evil. It’s seen as immature and on par with any blinding addiction that prevents us from seeing life in its wholeness.

The preferred path, the ‘razor’s edge path’, is the Shreya route which, by detaching us from the cycle of attachment and its consequences, leads us to the hidden Self (Atman) within and thus to freedom from bondage. For, this Self is eternal, unchanging. It “slays, not, nor is ever slain,” in the words of the Katha Upanishad, words that Ralph Waldo Emerson famously echoes in his poem ‘Brahma’. Choosing this Self that lies behind all the ephemeral pleasures of the everyday life-world is a path notoriously difficult to traverse and “sharp like a razor’s edge.” Any moment, you can be pulled back by physical, emotional or intellectual addiction to the familiar death-ridden world where Yama resides.
Yama’s fork is clear: an either/or between joyful liberation from death and rebirth, or an endless succession of lives wallowing in the trough of pleasure but paying the grim price of dying over and over again.
Yama’s pedagogy offers us the most dramatic example of a Vedantic paradigm, wherein attachment to things of the world is framed not as sinful, but rather as an ignorance that keeps one chained to the recurrent wheel of death and rebirth.
Yet, here’s the rub: Yama’s fork smacks of privileging Shreya and marginalizing Preya. Despite the brave non-dualist talk of Advaita approaches, the fork points mutely to a dichotomous value system, an either/or that paints one signifier in a glorious etherial light and the other in shades of darkness and disapproval.

First published in Indian Express, April 30, 2018

Human beings are born with desires. Actually desires gives form to a soul, a new life. If you look closely, Christmas and all other festivals are there to celebrate human desires – gifts, new clothes, food, decoration, and parties etc. to make us feel special.

Do scriptures and holy books talk against desires? I don’t think so, it has been misinterpreted. The words of God are taken literally. The real meaning remains unknown to our noisy and rigid mind.

Live life like lotus in pond, which remains unaffected by the water around.

What does it means? To be detached while performing action– the word detachment, is just not a word but the destination itself. Do you think it is easy to attain it? It is important to understand that it is a long process and saturation is essential.

Saturation is also not another word but again the destination itself. Fulfilment of desires in the best possible way is needed to reach a saturation point.

What are the desires – a strong longing for an object or person. There is a continuous flow of thoughts – how to achieve it, a constant planning, talking and analysing in the mind, sometimes chain of lies to achieve it etc.

Many times mind says; it is not worth it, and tries to distract itself in some or the other way. But it is the deepest need of soul to experience. So it repulses back again and again with greater strength.

One might think he has conquered the desire by restraining it for long time but it is not the inner truth. There is a constant conflict inside. Analytical mind wins on the basis of concepts. But inner longing does not satisfy and keeps surfacing up because desires do not understand any logic and arguments. Still mind brings back attention to the rationality. This is a continuous fight inside till it is supressed deeply. As a result one becomes rigid and loses the inner and outer softness, spontaneity and innocence.

The supressed desires in childhood are the root cause of the adult problems. Children have very simple and innocent desires related to food and sleep. 70% market is based on food selling items. Food is the most important source of life after air and water. And it has always been neglected and underestimated. Food not only satisfies the senses to a greater extend but has power to heal body and mental problems. If a child is craving for something and it is not fulfilled, he subconsciously falls in a trap of manipulations.  Then why to supress the simple desire and unnecessary encourage the child’s greed by not fulfilling it?

On the other side, Imagine you went to a European trip, you have all the money to buy everything you wish, but,  you still might not be able to eat stomach full food, for some reason, like a toothache, bad stomach, vegetarian issues. How long can you enjoy the beauty all around and shopping branded bags and cloths? Food has so much impact on our life that only in its absence do we realise it.

Case 1

Mom- Get up from the bed quickly.

Banni- Its Sunday mom, let me sleep.

Mom- No matter, you need to get up by 8.30 at least.

Banni kept sleeping

Mom – Get up you lazy and eat breakfast on time.

Banni- what is there in breakfast?

Mom – Fruits, milk and paratha

Banni – I always get paratha in school, I want to have bread rolls today with onion and chatani.

Mom- Have a healthy breakfast. Spicy food is not good for the body.

Banni- Every day you give me healthy breakfast, one day will not make any difference.

Mom made big eyes, which means a big No.

Papa- why don’t you make Bread rolls for her?

Mom – You stay out of it.I have to take care of her health.

Banni and her Papa both exchange an understanding look which says I will get you something from market to substitute your carving.

Parents are the child’s Santa. Who else will fulfil the desires accept parents. But these day either parents just get everything or they become too strict.

 

 

Case 2

Mom – you slept well today on Sunday.

Banni – yes mom, I was very tired. Can I have bread rolls in breakfast along with mint chatani?

Mom – ok but first you need to finish milk and fruit.

Banni – ok mom.

Banni – can we go to market in evening, I want to buy a board game which I saw at my friend’s house.

Mom – I will buy you if you promise to consistently study everyday and get good marks in your upcoming Unit test in all the subjects.

Banni – I will try mom. But if I don’t get it then will you not get me the game?

Mom –If you don’t manage it this time, you have to work hard next time to get your game. But I will take you to food joint after your exams.

Banni – Yes mom I will try my best. You are the most balanced mom and I love you for that.

 

Sleep is also another important aspect in child’s growth. It is very important that child should sleep according to his or her body requirement, which varies from child to child. It is basic and essential need of a child. Relaxed body, relaxes the mind, then it works more efficiently.

We teach our children certain things which do not match with our own actions and behaviour. Books inspire when they match with the reality around the child.

• We teach them to talk less but we did we dont follow that.
• We teach them to eat right but never miss any opportunity to eat outside food.
• We teach them to spend wise, but who showed the way to shopping malls to our children? Who introduced him/her to branded clothes and shoes.

We make children a medium to fulfil our own unfulfilled desires. Let’s be truthful and accept it. Then question arises; what to do? We are now tagged as parents. The way out is to fulfil them truthfully.

Desires are beautiful if it is harmless to others. Imagine a life without desire. It is like Halwa without sweet, cake without sugar. Life is too dry. I don’t know how enlightened people feel. And I am not eagerly looking forward it. When it happens, it happens. Only thing I know is that there is a joy and sweetness in small things in life and I don’t want to throw that away right now. Life is constantly pushing all of us to outgrow our desire and realise the total freedom but I will decide my own saturation point not through concepts made by others.

Let us enjoy the Christmas and Happy New Year with new understanding.

 

 

 

With all our contemporary anxieties and fears globally, locally and in our personal lives, refreshing wisdom from the great ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca

Fear is mostly due to projecting our thoughts way ahead of us, instead of
adapting to the present moment.
Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they escape
them, they worry no more!
We however, are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.
Memory brings back the agony of fear, while foresight brings it on
prematurely.
No one confines unhappiness to the present moment.
–Seneca: Letters from a Stoic

Seneca is arguably one of the great Stoic voices, largely because he
acknowledges his own and the other’s vulnerability and humanness, instead
of retreating to the cold, stiff upper lip attitude of most Stoic
philosophers. This text is priceless–who ever said Zen, Taoism and Ram
Dass invented ‘Be here now’? Seneca recommends being in the present moment,
even with one’s fears.

I love the lines: ‘Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and
once they escape them, they worry no more!
We however, are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.’
Humans (for the most part) are tormented by past recollections of a fearful
situation (yes, that one–with your ex, your former or current boss, your
spouse, mother), or with your fave phobia. Or, they run from an anticipated
fear of what MIGHT happen in the future. Animals in the wild, recoil ONLY
from dangers here and now and are scared here and now. They don’t sit
around ‘pasting’, or ‘future-izing’ about what could happen next.

Recognising the Lakshanas of Indian Design

By Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

(Text of the talk delivered at the India Habitat Centre as part of the Architecture and Society Series: trailer of the video below)

 

My talk, as its title states, seeks to recognise the lakshanas of Indian design. But before I try to do that, I need to clarify what I imply when I say ‘Indian’ and ‘design’ – both words are open to diverse interpretation. And why I speak of ‘lakshanas’.

We’ll start with some pictures, all drawings of buildings, rather beautiful drawings. The question I have for all of you, is which of these seem ‘Indian’ to you? All? Any in particular that doesn’t?

Speaking for myself, I recognise some of these as Indian, because they are either famous buildings, or famous types of buildings – such as temples or palaces. Another reason, which makes them typically Indian, is the people and the landscape around. But, the question I ask myself is, that if I didn’t know these buildings, would I be able to point out anything else that makes them Indian – apart from the fact that they are located in the present political boundaries of India?

 

These drawings are by a gentleman called David Gentleman. They feature in a book entitled David Gentleman’s India. They offer an outsider’s view of what constitutes India, and obviously it’s also a very personal view. In his introduction, DG writes that the challenge for him was to ‘identify…the many features that are found nowhere else, things that, wherever you are, give the unmistakable character and flavour of Indian life, the clear and vivid certainty of being in India’.[1] It is interesting that he chooses to sketch very few modern buildings in his book to convey this ‘character’. Also, if you remove the people and the landscape from the scene of these buildings, there is no ‘vivid and clear certainty’ that you are in India! In the case of the drawings of historic architecture, they are certainly more individual, and more beautiful. But, the same question arises – is there anything they share which makes them recognisably Indian? This is what I’ll try to examine today – to the extent possible in the time we have.

 

We started with an outsider’s view, and it is important in showing us how Indian architecture and India are perceived by people from non-Indian cultures. However, ultimately this is an outsider’s view, no matter how empathetic the outsider might be. To get a more balanced and a better understanding of what India and Indian design mean, it’s important to reverse the gaze and see these from the inside, from the Indian perspective.

So, what is the Indian perspective? Is there anything different about such a perspective that results in uniquely Indian design?

In today’s time of course, there seems to be little perceptible difference between the non-Indian and the conventional and influential Indian perspective – shaped as they are by an overwhelming preoccupation with the industrial market and with money, For instance, the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia page of the Association of Indian Design Industry contains this sentence: ‘The design profession has formally existed in India since 1962’.[2] To me, this statement seems surprising, even outrageous, given that the extraordinary variety and level of designs that have been generated in India through centuries, could only have been the outcome of a formal and a highly evolved system of design. Again, if you look up the meaning of design noted in dictionaries and explained in most books on design, whether written in India or elsewhere, they almost exclusively limit designing to the act of drawing or planning; and make a separation between planning something, and actually creating it. However, this is not a universal method of design, either in terms of time or space. It is not the way in which design was practised historically anywhere in the world, and certainly not in India. This separation is an outcome of a fairly recent occurrence in terms of world history, commonly termed the Industrial Revolution, which took place about 250 years ago – not in India – but in the western world. Yet, our understanding of the origin of Indian design, as in many other things, mimics a western cultural stand-point, especially a stand point of an industrialized society.

Thus, to get a less imitative or a more truly Indian viewpoint, we need to expand our view to examine India and Indian-ness as conceived by Indians, and not limited to merely the present times. Here we come to the word ‘lakshana’, the noun derived from ‘laksh’. The root word means ‘to perceive, to observe’, and lakshana/m implies the signs/marks which help to make such perception/ observation manifest.[3] As Chaturvedi Badrinath notes in a discussion^[4] on the Mahabharata: ‘One characteristic of Indian thought has been that in the place of definitions of things, it asks for their attributes or lakshanas. That is because all definitions are arbitrary, whereas the lakshanas are what show a thing, through which a thing becomes manifest. Thus, not the ‘definition’ of truth, or of love, but the attributes of truth and love by which they are known is what is central.’

 

 I

The Lakshana of being Indian

So, what are the attributes, the lakshanas of being Indian, and of Indian design – and how do we arrive at them.^[5]

Well, by a rather long route, by going back to our most ancient works on philosophy, such as the Upanishads. Philosophy is termed ‘darshan’ in India, and it literally means ‘to see’. How we see ourselves, forms our first and primary identity, and affects whatever else we do. In the Indian system, historically, the ideal individual sees herself or himself as an extension of the clan, the community, the country and even the cosmos, all of which are connected, and are part of the same aatman or ‘spirit’. All the Upanishads essentially approach the universal spirit and its infinite expression in space and time, while highlighting its inseparable connection with all human beings. This was not just an abstract principle that scholars studied. It was explained and handed down in stories and tales, and enacted in folk-drama and dance. For example, in the Mahabharata, one of the reasons for the Great War, is believed to be King Dhritarashtra’s inability to see and accept this interconnectedness, despite the advice of his minister, Vidura.^[6]

This basis of Indian culture, which inter-linked the individual to a very wide context, led to some of its overriding and distinct lakshanas, which I’ve summarized below.

 

1. The first of these lakshanas is collective responsibility and self-reliance. As the poet Rabindranath Tagore explains, ‘…unlike in Europe, the State has never been in India a central thing in the life of the nation. While European civilization assigned a central position to the State, Indian civilization from ancient times put in that place society guided by dharma as it was conceived by the people.’^[7] The root of the word dharma, means to sustain or to uphold, and historically in India, individuals as well as the community of which they were a vital part, worked responsibly together to sustain cultivable land, forests, rivers, wells, water-tanks, schools, temples, mosques, market-places, etc.[8] This lakshana of Indian society survived even till the 18^th century, until the British changed this system, as the research of the Gandhian historian, Dharampal, shows. He examined a host of documents that the British made for circulation amongst themselves after they moved into India, and found in them, records of Indians all over the subcontinent, in accordance with ancient custom, retaining independent control over a certain ratio of the land of a village and its yield which was used collectively by the people. This sense of collective responsibility is very different from the mechanistic and individualist philosophy characteristic of western society, that became particularly pronounced after the influence of the 17^th century French philosopher, Rene Descartes, who is dubbed as the father of modern western philosphy.
2. The second lakshana is ‘Respect for people with divergent views and sub-identities, and simultaneous existence of such identities.’ The world-view of the Upanishads developed into the many schools of philosophy historically seen in India, which stressed an interdependence between people, objects and their contexts. Unlike many other cultures, especially western cultures, where one dominant philosophy successively supplants another, historically in India, even if many of these schools of philosophy were not followed by the majority, and despite wide differences between some of them, all of them generally found space to exist simultaneously.
3. The third Lakshana is: Cyclical Ideas of Space and Time: In Indian tradition, space and time are believed to exist in endless cosmic cycles. Each cycle is actually a process of regression or falling, according to which we live in Kalyuga, the last and the worst in a cycle of four yugas. Since ancient times, this cyclical connection has been bound to the idea of human existence recurring over many life-times, and to the sacred geography of India, and its local and larger histories. As Tagore puts it: ‘the geographical entity that is India appears from the earliest times to have roused in its people the desire to realise the unity comprised within its natural boundaries…the process of capturing complete picture within the net of a common devotion’. Despite the influence of modern western education, this lakshana of space an dtime persists to some degree in the Indian imagination—witnessed as much in the propensity of Indians still journeying to sites across the sub-continent on well-traversed routes, as in our daily conversation, films, songs, and proverbs such as ‘Yeh Kalyuga hai’ to explain away present day problems. This is completely different from dominant Western thought, which sees time as linear, along which, according to the Darwinian concept of the survival and progress of the ‘fittest’, humans march on, to claim and exploit the resources of the Earth, and now even of Mars and the Moon!^[9]

II

So, how do these lakshana of Indian-ness manifest or reflect in Design?

 

The word lakshana itself crops in all sort of contexts and places in the tradition of Indian design, either specifically stated or implied. In temple architecture for instance, as enumerated in the Silparatnakosa, a 17^th century text on Orissan temple architecture, the lakshanas of individual parts of the temple are listed. Indeed, the text itself begins with a description of silpa or architecture as ‘silpam hi param pujyam sarva darshanlakshanam’ translated as: ‘Silpa is the most venerated. It is the visual testimony of all the darsanas, or contains the characteristics of all the darsanas.[10] In the context of painting, as BN Goswamy, the art historian, explains in his book, The Spirit of Indian Painting, ‘In early India, the emphasis was on capturing the lakshanas of an individual, his characteristic or cognitive attributes’[11]… through which persons and their essence, could be recognised…The intention was to achieve clarity. Observation was subordinated not to rules…but to situations. …what prevailed as an idea, was idealised or conceptual portraiture’.[12]

The unique characteristics of Indian design arise from an idealised or conceptual image of everything being interlinked, and there being no barriers in the cosmos. Thus, there is no strict division between the arts and sciences; craft is held to be a science, vijnana, and the knower of crafts, called vijnanika or scientist, is given an important status.[13] Neither is there any separation between architecture, craft and art. For example, the Silparatnakosa, starts with a prayer to Visvakarma, the divine architect in Indian tradition,[14] who is also the God of the arts and crafts,[15] and whose five sons are held to be the ancestors of the important groups of craftsmen. And finally, there is no separation between theoreticians and practitioners; between planning a design and making it. The Mayamata, a Sanskrit text on architecture from South India, whose written form is dated from the 9th to the 12th centuries, specifies that the architect must not only know mathematics, sciences, and how to draw, but also how to build on the ground. The text discusses design in the widest sense – from the level of a built settlement (urban and rural) to that of a seat or a chair, using an interlinked system of aesthetics, proportions, measurements and construction techniques. Practical applications of such unity are seen in the detailing of space and form in indigenous design. For instance, there is no strict boundary between internal and external elements of architecture. Pavilions and courtyards, colonnades and walled gardens, seem to flow from one into the other. And in theatre, unlike the ‘framed’ proscenium stage of western origin, which presents only a front view to the audience, indigenous performance spaces offer multiple view-points, in both actual and imaginative terms. The actors perform on a circular or semicircular platform, around which the audience sits. Instead of elaborate physical sets, the audience themselves visualise changes in locale or characters, as explained by a sutradhar, who literally carries forward the ‘thread’ of the narrative.

 

I have looked at some examples of Indian design across some of its fields, to see what are the lakshanas generated from this design philosophy, which can be said to render them Indian. The first of these, in my view is:

1. The Lakshana of Flexibility and Versatility. In Indian architecture, this is most evident in the way in which built and open space combined together in flexible ways – for multiple purposes, users and occasions. This is visible from the time of the oldest urban architecture in India, such as in the remains of the cities along the banks of the Saraswati and the Indus. Probably the most evolved instance of such multi-functional architecture is the magnificent seventeenth century palace-fortress built in Delhi for the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.^[16] Most of the buildings in this Fort were designed as single-storeyed pavilions linked by colonnades and courtyards, as can be seen in this map; instead of one fixed purpose, they were formed and located such that they could be used for different functions at different times. For example, the Emperor’s own pavilions were not just used for sleeping and living, but also for administrative meetings and for receiving visiting ambassadors; or for celebration of festivals such as Holi. In Indian attire, this lakshana can be best seen in the tendency to use unstitched, woven garments—despite the technology and the knowledge of stitching from very ancient times.^[17] The most famous of such unstitched garments is the sari. Since it is not tailored and sewn to fit one individual, it can be handed down to several generations, to suit multiple users for multiple years. These are some saris that have come to me from my mother and grandmother-in law, which like the saris of most women from their generations and before, are stunning and individual pieces of design. The counterpart to this in men’s wear, is the multi-purpose dhoti, mundu, or lungi, which depending on the fabric, the weave and the drape, may be used for celebratory occasions such as pujas and weddings, or for informal occasions such as simply lounging around at home. Even traditional stitched garments in India, such as the ghagra and the lehnga, though with a naturally diminished scope in comparison to unstitched clothes, also have the flexibility of multiple use, and are handed down as family heirlooms.
2. 2. The lakshana of Individuality and improvisation—Improvisation is an intrinsic Indian design-strength. Consider, for instance, the stonework of the famed Taj Mahal, or the sculptured bases of many ancient temples all over India. Despite an impression of symmetry and order, motifs are never repeated in exactly the same way. Or think of the pavilions and courtyards of traditional palaces. The sizes, details and proportions of such formal architecture are never replicas or duplicates. Plan of Rf. Instead of centralised control, where everything down to the smallest dimension is ‘frozen’, even the canonical Indian approach to design followed a strongly structured and yet decentralised process of design, that fostered improvisation at every level. In fact, Bruno Dagens, prefaces his translation of the Mayamata with these words: ‘in spite of the constraints by which the treatise seems to limit the architecture, it is also true that the architect has considerable latitude at his disposal, as much in the domain of choice of architectural parts as that in the appearance that the constructions may have…this treatise and others of the same group, leave to architects the right to originality in the exercise of their art; in other words, the tradition is a guide more than it is a restraint.’^[18]This aspect of Indian tradition ‘being a guide more than a restraint’ can be seen even today in the classical and folk forms of Indian music, which give great opportunity for personal individual expression. Each raga is structured for specific different moods or times of the day, and yet allows the ultimate freedom to each singer or musician in rendering the raga.

Such an approach was very different from other cultures, and therefore difficult for their people to understand. So, for instance, a Professor C H Reilly, who was sent to India in 1928 by a firm of publishers to write the architectural part of a book on New Delhi, arrived in company with Edwin Lutyens at Delhi, and later wrote this in the November 1934 London issue of the Architectural Design and Construction: ‘Everything of Lutyens is detailed with extraordinary care, and at Delhi some of his working drawings are dimensioned to three decimals of an inch. To Indian builders and craftsmen accustomed to their slipshod “kutcha” methods, such accuracy was a revelation and a very valuable one.’

Perhaps the most widespread living example of the lakshana of improvisation is the sari. Though the overall dimensions are more or less fixed, there are many variations of the sari. Even saris from the same region are never identical, though they may have characteristic motifs special to that region. Not just that – even when based on a similar overall design or created by the same weaver, no two hand-woven saris are ever exactly the same. Nor does the individual uniqueness of a sari, end in its making. Though urban Indians generally know of only one way to drape it, a sari can be reputedly draped in 108 recorded ways, and can be pleated and tied to individual preference and skill. This is one way of tying the sari that I learnt from my daughter’s Odissi Guru, Pratibha Jena Singh, where the sari is transformed into an elegant and comfortable dancing costume merely by draping and tying it differently. This improvisation is visible in other forms of design practice, particularly in classical Indian theatre, music and dance. Habib Tanvir, the famous theatre actor and director, created a distinctive style of modern Indian drama based on the “imaginative use of space with regard to make-believe, and the manner in which they deal with time”. He repeatedly voiced his strong belief, that “in Indian art it’s important to …improvise,”^[19]  and used the method of improvisation in the construction and the casting of his plays.

3. The Lakshana of ‘Utilitarian as Decorative’: The latitude to improvise within a context, not only gives a huge creative opportunity, but also elevates the everyday activity or artefact to something special. This contributes to another lakshana of Indian design, where objects of use – from saris to cities to kitchen-ware – are simultaneously useful and beautiful. This was true for the majority of designs in the Indian tradition, and points to a lakshana of rigorous design-thinking based on frugality despite an outward semblance of opulence. Looking at traditional designs, one finds that each object of use was also a work of art; and each beautiful object also had a use. The presence of this lakshana even till about a hundred years ago, is recorded in an observation by George Birdwood, meant to form part of a popular handbook on the industrial arts of India, in connection with the reopening of the India Museum in London: ‘In India everything is hand wrought, and everything, down to the cheapest toy or earthen vessel, is therefore more or less a work of art’.^[20] These are some images of toys, kitchen ware and other household objects from across the country, that are such hand-crafted ‘works of art’.
4. The lakshana of sustainablity: Since nothing was designed as simply utilitarian or purely decorative, most objects had a continuing use, and were thought of, in their entirety, to form a way of life that was a celebration of all the senses. The ultimate idea of luxury even today, is that of ‘bespoke design’, which is sold with a tagline of ‘…not just ownership or consumption of an expensive object, but an enriching, individualizing, personal experience…which stays with the user for posterity’^[21]. As for instance, these beautiful saris. This is unlike the western ‘modernist’ way of design based on making huge numbers of standardised, machine-made and repetitive products. To make this method of production work, products are designed with a shortened life-cycle, in a design-method especially promoted by Western designers after the World Wars. The name they coined for it was ‘planned and perceived obsolescence’. Superficial changes are applied cosmetically to make these products look ‘different’; and aggressively marketed as new and novel, to instil ‘in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary’.^[22]
5. The Lakshana of Optimum efficiency: In contrast, indigenous Indian design-education and practice, stressed an optimal use of resources. Preliminary drawings and models were used very rarely and only in important or unusual building-projects. Thus, the huge urban-design project of the Red Fort of Delhi and its city of Shahjahanabad, took less than 10 years to build, and did not require voluminous drawings or models. The court-histories of Shah Jahan record only one instance of an architectural model being made for the Red Fort, that of the Chatta Chowk, a type of covered market-way made for the first time in the Mughal empire. Though much reduced because of colonial interventions, some vestiges of this way of designing continued even till the 20^th century. In a Report on Types of Modern Indian Buildings prepared in 1915, to survey and record how Indian designers built in the indigenous way, Gordon Sanderson, an architect with the ASI, noted that ‘excellent specimens of modern architecture’[23] were constructed in the traditional method of Indian design using practically no drawings, all over the sub-continent -ranging from the huge Tajul-Masajid in Bhopal, established by the Begum of Bhopal, to individual houses, dharamsalas, temples, etc.

These designs were also highly efficient in that they integrated structure, decoration and form; it is difficult to separate a building element into just structure or just decoration. This spirit of optimum efficiency, where no element is superfluous, is a well recognized quality of good design. Similarly, if we look at most traditional saris, we find that the design effort integrates decoration, form, and structure; it is part of spinning the material, composing the patterns and directly weaving them on the fabric. And rarely is it made through elaborate drawings. This is true not just for saris. Sanderson, in his Report, wrote that even in complex work, such as carved jaalis or Agra pietra dura, the masons or inlayers, when they needed to, drew the patterns themselves on the stone, without any help from a draftsman. Even today, for example, in the highly complex patterns made in Sanjhi work, the craftsperson skilfully cuts out patterns in paper, often without making any drawing before-hand. The tool remains subservient to the human being.

6. The Lakshana of Egalitarianism. All this was possible because, instead of the idea of centralised control, the Indian approach to design was decentralised. Design was seen as a collaborative process. The Mayamata states that all the four categories of building technicians must always be honoured. The hierarchy and division of responsibilities amongst these four categories—the sthapati, the architect; the sutragrahin, who measures length, height and proportions; the taksaka, who cuts/carves stone, wood and bricks, and the vardaka, who assembles and erects the building, is clearly stated; as is the fact that, depending on occasion and ability, the sutragrahin, taksaka etc. can take on the duties and even the title of the sthapati.

The celebrated city of Shahjahanabad, established in the 17th century—considered ‘modern’ and termed ‘New Delhi’ by British visitors till the early 20th century—was built by master-builders and guild-heads collaborating in such a system, not through a top-down centralised diktat of one ‘star’ architect. Thus, there was no rigid compartmentalisation. A sculptor could also be an architect; a painter could also be a mason, and so on. This is the main gateway to the 17th century Guru Ram Rai Durbar in Dehradun, also called the Jhanda Durbar. Tulsi Ram, one of the artists who made many of the beautiful murals here, has painted himself on a side-panel of the main door; he names himself as mistri, tasveerwala (mason, painter). As The ASI Report of 1915, notes, till the beginning of the 20th century, this was the method of Indian design.

Since knowledge about aesthetics was shared by the makers, the users and the patrons, design choices across different economic classes were similar. In the sites of the Harappan cities, as Neil Macgregor, Director of The British Museum, notes, ‘there seems to be little difference between the homes of the rich and the poor’.^[24] And a Persian text from the 1820s, documenting eleven trade-crafts and their practitioners in Bareilly, describes their clothes as being ‘just like other inhabitants of the country’ or ‘like upper-class people’,^[25] while a British officer in the Nizam’s court at Hyderabad, writes that he could not distinguish much difference between the poor and the rich.^[26]

 

Design today                                             

To sum up: two main categories contribute to making something Indian, whether in society or in design. The first is a political process which allows individual expression and fosters individual responsibility – whether at the level of decision-making, control of resources, ways of production, or at the level of consumption and use. The second category is the presence of a linked system of aesthetics guided by ethics – a product of this political process, whose design expression in India evolved through diverse design-practitioners.

 

So, how many of these lakshana survive today in a time when the political system is manifestly different from the Indian tradition; when we have adopted the western way of the State being paramount and have displaced individual or societal codes of conduct. In such a political environment, can we have an Indian way of design? Well, if we agree that the Indian way of design stems from an indigenous system of aesthetics and ethics, that system is largely lost today. Ideas of society and design are modelled on imitations from the western world, and naturally most Indian designs are stereotypes of European or North-American cultures. We therefore only find isolated lakshanas of ‘Indian-ness’ in society, and in the practice of design – for example in the widespread ability of Indians to still improvise; to be self-reliant rather than follow centralised decision-making – but without a unifying vision.

So, can we restore that sense of aesthetics and ethics? Should we restore it? And can we get inspired from other cultures and still retain an Indian quality to our work? I am going to approach this a little tangentially. First, through coming back to the work of Habib Tanveer, who created a distinctive brand of modern Indian drama, recognized and feted throughout the country and abroad. He did this by using attributes of Indian folk and classical traditions in scripting and directing his plays, so that in his own words, he “came right back to ‘Indianness’…to our Sanskrit tradition and folk traditions. Blending folk with the classical, realising there are no barriers.”^[27] The actors in the plays Tanvir directed, themselves created memorable actions and dialogues ‘as equal partners’, making them ‘a collective collaborative endeavour’. However, Tanvir did not just confine himself to Sanskrit classics, traditional themes or stories; he adapted Shakespeare, Moliere, Brecht. In all these he tackled many contemporary issues of modern society, but with local idioms and language – whether it was his native Chattisgarhi in Mitti ki Gadi based on Sudrakas Mricchakatikam, or the street-dialects of Agra Bazaar based on the life of the poet Nazir Akbarabadi, and he used the principles of imaginative space and time found in the classical and folk tradition of India.

My second example is through Indian film music. I would like you to listen to a short audio clip. Colonel Bogie and yeh dil na hota bechara. The basic tune is the same, but the second piece is recognisably Indian. Here there is a music director, SD Burman; there is an arranger, there are singers and musicians performing according to pre-determined tunes and arrangements in the Western tradition of music set to specifications. Despite this, and despite a western tune being used, there is a distinctive Indian quality. Though this exercise is not as spontaneously collaborative as Habib Tanvir’s way of theatre, to me there seem to be some commonalities that render them Indian because of.

1. Language singing/acting,
2. Intonation of the words,
3. Imagery/idioms evoked/used.
4. Individual space given to the singer/actor/performer,
5. Rhythmic structure of the music/the play.

 

One could perhaps make a similar checklist for architecture, which could render it recognisably Indian. Some aspects that come to my mind are:

1. Materials of construction
2. Language of architecture or elements used – chajjas, courtyards, pavilions, colonnades
3. The manner in which these elements combine, are rendered;
4. Method of construction: how much scope for individuality – not just of the main architect, but the entire team.
5. Rhythm of space and time expressed in architecture – how spaces unfold, how you approach a building, move through it.

 

I would like to end with a few instances of architecture from the 20^th and 21^st century. These do not carry the outward trappings commonly associated with being Indian, and are also quite different from each other. In fact, some of these designers have been trained in the modernist way and do use modern materials, some of them are not born in India, and some are not even trained in the formal institutional way. Nevertheless, they seem to me, to contain some of the lakshanas that I associate with Indian design: of flexibility and frugality, of dissolving barriers between internal and external space, and of a humane concern for the context, of a feel for the craft of building. These, of course, may be considered desirable qualities of good design universally. But most design today, in a mimicry of western trends, seeks to replace human beings with machines and robots; or reduce the role of human beings to repetitive robotic work in assembly line firms under a big boss or two. Naturally, such architecture has a shrunken quality and cannot be representative of any human quality, let alone any recognisably Indian quality. This is clear today even to many of those brought up on the cult of the master-architect. Meejin Yoon, Head Of Department of Architecture in MIT, identifies one of the great challenges facing the architecture profession today, especially in the more industrialised part of the world, as ‘…the contraction of the architect’s ability to intervene in that built environment’. She adds: ‘The construction industry is no longer as integrated with architecture as it was historically when we had a relationship with craftspeople, because construction is now its own kind of industry.’[28]

It may be worthwhile to remember that if as a society, we decide to put ourselves completely in thrall of the market, we may all end up like Charlie Chaplin in the movie Modern Times. And in the cyclical manner of the Indian view, I would like to come back to the empathetic outsider, David Gentleman, that: ‘Market forces had nothing to do with the creation of any of the things one goes to India to see’.

[1] P.7

[2]  Accessed on 14.07.2017

[3] The Concise Sanskrit Dictionary, Sanskrit-Hindi-English, Meharchan Lachhmandas Publications, New Delhi, Complied by Dr Ram Sagar Tripathi, p. 148

^[4]              Seminar, April 2010 Issue: The Enduring Epic, ‘Living with the Mahabharata’, p. 69.

^[5]              A thought-provoking exploration of ‘Is there an Indian Way of Thinking’, can be found in pp.34-51, The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, edited by Vinay Dharwadker; See also ‘Bharatiya Chitta, Manas and Kala’, Dharampal

^[6]              Mahabharata, Udyog Parva, ViduraNiti; see Bharat Gupt, India: A Cultural Decline or Revival, Preface, p. xiv, D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd, New Delhi, 2008; Chaturvedi Badrinath, Mahabharata, An Enquiry into the Human Condition, p. 91; http://blog.practicalsanskrit.com/2009/11/renounce-smaller-selfish-interests-for.html

^[7]              The Mahatma and The Poet, Ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, p. 25, Introduction.

[8] For instance, in a survey of ‘over 2000 villages in South India in the Chengalpattu district during the mid-18^th Century. This survey also recorded the total land belonging to each village, the utilization of this land for various purposes, the net cultivated land, the details of land assigned to various village institutions and functions, p. 19, Dharampal, Essays on Tradition, Recovery and Freedom

[10] Pp.31-, 333, Silparatnakosa

[11] P.36

[12] Pp. 39-41

[13] Silpa in Indian Tradition, Concept and Instrumentalities, R.N.Misra, p. 13

[14] Silparatnakosa of Sthapaka Niranjan Mahapatra, Edited and Translated by Bettina Baumer and Rajendra Prasad Das, IGNCA and Motilal Banarasidass Publishers Pvt ltd. First published 1994

[15] The Indian Craftsman, ‘Religious Ideas in Craftsmanship’, A.K. Coomaraswamy, p. 46

^[16] For a detailed analysis of the design of this fort, see The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, OUP 2003.

^[17] Evidenced by the archaeological finds of needles in sites of the Harappan civilization – in Lothal, Rakhigarhi and Banawali. See S.R. Rao, Lothal, p. 54-5, Archaeological Survey of India, 1985, Reprint 2009. Silk and wheel-spun cotton have also been found in two new sites, Michel Danino, The Lost River, p.112, Penguin 2010. And seen in the representation of both draped and stitched clothes in sculptures. Anamika Pathak, p. 13, Indian Costumes

^[18]            Bruno Dagens, Mayamata, Introduction, p.xlv-xlvi

 

^[19]               ‘My Milestones in Theatre, Habib Tanvir in Conversation’, p. 23, Charandas Chor; his daughter, Nageen, in an interview,  http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/living-theatre/article4724470.ece

^[20] The Arts of India, 1880, G.C.M. Birdwood, Reprint 1971, The British Book Company, p.131.

^[21]             Living, Issue 7, The Park Magazine, ‘Made to Measure’, p.03,

^[22]  The practice of artificially shortening product lifecycle in order to influence the buying patterns of consumers, popularised in the last century by Clifford Brooks Stevens, an influential American industrial designer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Stevens, accessed 24.04.1014. See also: http://jayhanson.us/annie_leonard_footnoted_script.pdf

[23] Ibid. pp.11-17

^[24] Neil Macgregor, p.81, Indus Seal, A History of the World in 100 Objects

^[25] Ghulam Yahya, Crafting Traditions, Documenting Trades and Crafts in Early 19^th Century North India, Trans. Mehr Afshan Faroouqui

^[26]Dharampal, Essays in Tradition, Recovery and Freedom, Collected Works Vol.V, 2001, pp. 17-8

^[27]            ‘My Milestones in Theatre, Habib Tanvir in Conversation’, Charandas Chor, p. 23.

[28] Interview on News Digest of the MIT School of Architecture + Planning, PLAN 88.