Is It Love?


Sunday Mid-Day, May 29, 1994

By Mahesh Bhatt


A conversation that searches for answers


May 23, 1994, Yercaud, Tamil Nadu.


It is a cool summer morning here in this part of the world. It is a morning that has never been before and never will be again.


It has rained last night and the parched earth looks watered, rich and nourished. There is a scent in the air and everything is again washed clean and all the leaves are shining bright in the soft morning light which is filtering through a blanket of dark cloud.


“How much change do you have on you, Mahesh?” asks UG, taking me away from the morning newspaper, in which a detailed report of the Prime Minister's sales talk during his week-long visit to the United States, which is expected to lead to an investment flow of 28 to 30 billion US dollars into India, is published.


“How much do you want?” I ask, pulling out a bundle of fifty rupee notes which is fast dwindling. “Five hundred rupees,” he says, and counting the soiled currency notes hands them over to the toothless Tamilian lady servant with whom he has been conversing in chaste Tamil.


“Nagarathna, see that your husband doesn't use this money to get drunk, buy a thatched roof for your house first,” he says and gracefully wishes her goodbye.


As I watch the dark figures of Nagarathna and her frail husband receding behind the rose bush that is full of bright red roses, I find myself face to face with that harsh question which is, in fact, the mother of all questions. “When people are the same everywhere, then why is there so much difference amongst them?”


Later, as the sun comes out of a sea of clouds and it gets warmer we drive up to the highest peak of Yercaud to watch the summer festival which is being celebrated by the scores of… the tribal women climbing the steep mountain path clutching their babies. It sparks off a conversation between UG and me. Here is a replay of that taped conversation.


Mahesh: UG, don't you find a contradiction between the issues facing America and Western Europe and those facing underdeveloped countries like ours?


For example, drugs, sex, crime and pleasure are the issues in America and Western European countries but poverty, lack of education and death due to malnutrition are the issues that we are grappling with in India and other underdeveloped countries. Why is there so much difference amongst men, UG? It is unfair.


UG: Mahesh, the difference is artificially created by the Western nations. They have the advantage of the technical know-how which was born out of the Industrial Revolution.


When the Revolution went to America, with the help of that technical know-how, they exploited the resources of God's plenty there. Mahesh, if anybody lands and colonises any place on any planet and establishes rights there and prevents all other nations from landing there, it is finished.


You see, the Americans established these rights on something which belonged to everybody. You know there was a time when anybody could go to the United States without a passport.


It was God's plenty that helped the Americans develop and hold on to what they have. But they continued to exploit the resources of the rest of the world as well as their own resources. Even today they are doing that. They don't want to give up.


Mahesh: But don't you think… India or in Russia, in America or in Africa?


UG: Yes, it is. All problems are artificially created by the various structures created by human thinking. Human thinking is born out of this neurological defect in the human species.


Anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive. Thought is a protective mechanism. It draws frontiers around itself and it wants to protect itself.


It is for the same reason that we draw lines on this planet and extend them as far as we can. Do you think these frontiers are going to disappear Mahesh? They are not.


Those who have had the monopoly on all the world's resources so far and so long, if they are threatened to be dislodged what they would do is anybody's guess. All the destructive weapons that they have in their arsenal are there only to protect their monopoly.


Mahesh: Don't you feel that the only way for humanity to survive is to bring about a change in the heart and that is love?


UG: No, not at all, because love implies division, separation. As long as there is division, as long as there is a separation within you, so long do you maintain that separation around you.


When everything fails, you use the last card, the trump in the pack of cards, and call it love. But it is not going to help us, and it has not helped us at all.


Even religion has failed to free man from violence and from ten other different things that it is trying to free us from. You see, it is not a question of trying to find new concepts, new ideas, new thoughts and new beliefs.


As I asked before, what kind of human being do you want on this globe? The human being.…


The model has not touched anything there. Your value system is responsible for the human malady, the human tragedy, forcing everyone to fit into that model.


So what do we do? You cannot do anything by destroying the value system, because you replace one value system with another.


What kind of human being you want, the only answer to this human problem, if there is any answer, is not to be found through new ideas, new concepts or new ideologies, but through bringing about a change in the chemistry of the human body.


But there is a danger even there. When once we perfect genetic engineering and change the human being, there will be a tendency to hand this technology over to the state.


Mahesh: What about the problems of the underdeveloped countries, like poverty and lack of education?


UG: Do you mean to say that literacy is the solution or the answer for the problems of India? We want to educate people so that they can read our newspapers, and through the media you are going to brainwash these people.


In India there are still peasants who are not touched by the modern man. They are something unique, I don't know. I have never visited any village recently.


But I really don't think educating people in the sense in which we are talking about, the literacy that we are talking about, is the way to really educate people.


Let me give you the example of my grandmother. My grandmother was not a literate person, although she knew how to read and sign papers. I learnt more from her about Advaita than I did from the professors at the University of Madras.


She was not an educated woman nor was she an enlightened person. But she was a very practical woman. She knew all about the great culture, more than the media that are under the grip of the government. Both are the same. I don't know. I am expressing a lot of opinions.


Mahesh: I feel that the present technological and scientific changes are the only answers for this world.


UG: Yes, but I must say one thing. Whatever achievements we have had so far through the help of high-tech and technology have benefited only a limited number of people on this planet.


If what they say is true, it is possible to feed twelve billion people with the resources at our command, the resources that nature has provided us, without the aid of high-tech and technology.


But then, why amongst five billion people is there poverty and misery? The answer is very simple. We are individually responsible for them and it is not the curse of the high gods.


The rich nations are not going to give up their riches unless they are forced to give them up. You see, the nine rich nations among the nine industrial nations, sit here and dictate their terms.


Are they going to give up the whole of the natural resources of the world? I don't think so, unless they are forced to. If they are forced to give them up what they will do is anybody's guess.


Even if they have everything to lose, I don't think they are going to give up anything. Even you will fight to the end to protect your way of life and your way of thinking. You may think as a pacifist today, but tomorrow if everything you had were to be taken away from you, I will not be surprised if you were to kill me, in spite of the fact that you claim to be my best friend.


Mahesh: I feel that many things that you have been talking about for the last few years have been coming true.


UG: If all that we have discussed now comes true, I won't tell myself or you – “I told you so.”

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