The Malady and The Remedy

A dialogue between the contextual world and eternal principles

This small but potent and thought provoking literature of….pages “The Malady and the
Remedy'' recalls a unique, impersonal dialogue that dates back to the 1950s between the
contemporary and contextual India and the continuing traditional India represented by two
high personalities -- one, a political giant and the other, a spiritual giant -- who were great in
their own respective domains at that time. The political giant was the Indian Prime Minister, a
leader of world stature, Jawaharlal Nehru. The spiritual giant was the Sankaracharya of
Kanchi Math Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswati. The political giant ruled contemporary India
for almost a decade after the dialogue. The spiritual giant who survived Nehru, lived for 100
years in, and yet away from, the contemporary world. The saint, who later became known
as, the Mahaswami or Paramacharya, is revered by many even today. The two had never
met nor did they ever have even an impersonal dialogue. Their monologues, strangely
connected by a common concern about the conflict between tradition and modernity, had
turned into continuing dialogue between the contextual and the eternal in the minds of the
readers of both. “The Malady and The Remedy”, which came in print five decades ago, is
still considered relevant as the conflict between what is contextual and what is durable is still
an ongoing issue, and is even an intensifying force.

Here I use the term ‘contemporary India’, for the changing India and ‘eternal India’, for the
traditional India that has lived and continues to live with an element of changelessness within
the everchanging India’. India has been changing on its own but at times it was also forced
to change against its will. Yet there has always been within such India continually changing
by freewill or by force, an element of changeless India. And that changeless India is what
has helped to sustain the Indian civilisation, Indian people, and their sense as a civilisational
nation through the millennia. The continuity ensured by the changeless element in the Indian
DNA constitutes an unbelievably perennial stream from ancient times which history dares
not peep, as Swami Vivekananda said, to contemporary times.

Two monologues that turned into a dialogue

It was really not, in the real sense of the term, a dialogue between the two giants in person
or through personalised correspondence. It was more a parallel expression of views, not a
two-way communication and certainly not a mutual clash of ideas or persons. It was a one
way statement by each of their respective worldviews through pen and print media with at
least one of them, Nehru, not knowing that the other, the Mahaswami, was giving his views
parallel to Nehru’s own. How did this happen? Pandit Nehru’s monologue was in a prose
written by him as an introductory foreword to the book “Sanskriti ke Char Adhyay” by the
celebrated Hindi poet of that time, Ramdharisingh Dinkar. The Mahaswami’s monologue was
in an article written by him in Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s magazine Bhavan’s Journal with
reference to a brief para in Nehru’s introductory preface. The Mahaswami could read
Nehru’s monologue that triggered his own monologue, but Nehru had no opportunity to read
the Mahaswami’s monologue. Because Pandit Nehru lacked that opportunity, to call it a
dialogue may not look entirely correct. But to say that it is not is also incorrect. How?

A dialogue is not necessarily between two persons. It can be between two perspectives
connected by common concern. A reading of the two monologues brings out the fact that
both are concerned at the conflict between the contemporary world and eternal principles.
Both have had in mind not just the idea of India but of the world and the idea and purpose of
human existence. The common link that justified the Mahaswami to state his position was
the confusion in Pandit Nehru’s mind that, because of the conflict between the traditional and
modern India, the present leadership was unable to lead the youngsters. Due to which

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Pandit Nehru apprehended that a crisis of character was in offing. And that was where the
Mahaswami thought fit to express his view, and his view did not in any way counter Nehru’s.
Had Nehru been conclusive one way or the other, not confused, about modernity, perhaps
the Mahaswami would not have had the opportunity to venture into expressing his views. Or
if he had expressed his views in contrast to Nehru’s it would be more a counter than a
parallel monologue. The Mahaswami’s exposition neither contradicted Nehru’s nor approved
his. The Mahaswami’s view merely added another perspective and contributed to advancing,
in the minds of readers of both him and Nehru, a dialogue between tradition and modernity.
The two monologues became dialogue by their common concern.

Provokes dialogue in the minds of the reader

Also two connected monologues can provoke a dialogue in the minds of the readers of the
two parallel views if there is a common link between the two. That the modernist Nehru
himself was in confusion about the conflict between the contemporary and the traditional
views was itself sufficient to provoke an intense dialogue between the contextual world and
eternal principles of life in the mind of those who read both Nehru and the Mahaswami. And
that is precisely what the two monologues did and resulted in The Malady and The Remedy
being brought out in print decades ago. Because of the common link, the views of the two
constituted expositions on two different worldviews, one centred on contemporaneity and the
other rooted in eternal values -- without contradicting or clashing with each other - that
provoked a continuing dialogue in the minds of the readers.

Millennial minds vs Quarterly Psyche

The conflict which the two great men saw between the contemporary and the eternal of the
1950s itself is now over 60 years old, which, by the chronology of linear history and the turns
in the course of the world would now be regarded as out-dated. The world has changed
unbelievably and seemingly irretrievably since, reducing even the then contemporary Nehru
view far less contemporary today. Two huge changes have taken place since Nehru’s times.
One, the paradigm of the Nehruvian world was ideological. But that has now changed into
the very opposite, paradigm of freedom from ideologies. Two, the Nehruivan world looked at
the future in years and decades. The time span of today’s world, whose paradigm has
altered since, has drastically changed and fallen steeply. The new ideology-free world is
almost entirely dominated by players in commerce whose mind is conditioned, encouraged
or discouraged by the coming quarter national GDP or the next quarter corporate results.
With the increasing importance of the financial world, the timespan on which societies’ minds
operate has reduced to days and even hours, as overnight interest rates play a huge role in
financial markets and a small change in it shifts through computers wealth in billions of
dollars from one country to another in a matter of hours and minutes. The contemporary
world has changed so much in the last 60-70 years, that it turns the ideas of yesterday into
outdated ideas today. But as a contrast to the ideas of Nehru, which seem outdated, the
worldview of the eternal Mahaswami seems to be holding on, however small a minority may
owe allegiance to it. The reason is simple. The world vision of saints like Mahaswami is
millennial, while the world view of Nehru, which was decadal in his times, has extended to
become quarterly now. This contrast between the two world views, the contemporary vs the
eternal, has become more acute, contrasting the millennial view of the saint with quarterly
psyche of the modernists

Crashing Life of Ideas

The world that is increasingly getting disconnected from the eternal values and roots is now
seeing the outcome of that disconnect. The life of each successive idea that ran the world in
the last few centuries has progressively shortened. For example, colonialism founded on the
whiteman’s burden to civilise the world once seemed the future of the world. But it just lived

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an exuberant life for a couple of centuries. Then came mercantile and free market capitalism
whose life got exhausted in a century yielding space to what is known as agency capitalism
which has destabilised the businesses and further eroded and reduced the timespan in the
world of commerce today from decades to hours. Then came communism that seemed to
upset the world applecart with revolution to overawe and overthrow all existing orders. Its life
too was snuffed out in half a century. Then came globalisation with a bang as the unalterable
and unimprovable future tense of the world forever. But in less than a quarter century the
dismature globalisation has had a premature demise, and it was pronounced dead by its
very proponents like the Economist magazine. Why is this dwarfing the life of ideas? It needs
no seer to answer this question as the answer for it is self-evident. As human objectives are
increasingly defined by ever shortening short time goals, the life of ideas that govern human
lives are bound to shorten even more, and not lengthen.

World order changing forever

In a world hit by the unprecedented corona pandemic, the entire post world war and the post
cold war global order are perceived by all world thinkers to be crumbling. The very mind that
structured the post cold war order, Henry Kissinger, has declared that the post Covid-19
world order would change forever, without saying what that change would be. The change
from is clear, but into what is unclear. The post cold war order was seen as the final victory
of the West over the Rest by some of the leading western thinkers who arrogantly advised
the Rest to follow the West as the best -- an advice that seemed to find many takers both in
the West and, surprisingly, even in the Rest. But what was seen by them as the founding
principles of Western victory over the Rest -- liberal democracy and free market capitalism --
have themselves come under great stress within a quarter century of the proclamation of the
victory by both. It is the very foundation of liberal democracy and free market capitalism of
the post cold war order that seem to be giving away. Recent studies show that liberal
democracies are facing increasing problems because of their very liberalism and the free
market in the world is facing problems because it became free for autocratic regimes to
operate in it. The very viability of the global market is conditioned by transparency in its
operators. But for utterly selfish reasons, the free market nations allowed autocracies into
the global market system for their own growth, and that began distorting and even destroying
the global free market. A stable autocracy and the state directed economy based on it
seems to be emerging successful against and challenging the less stable democracy and
the market-directed economy founded on it This is causing a huge powershift from the West
to Asia -- particularly from the US to China, with the latter challenging the world order
founded on liberal democracy and free market which rested on the power and leadership of
the West over the Rest. Will it change the existing world order seemingly based on liberal
democracy and free market forever? And into what the change will be? It calls for a
multidimensional and 360 degree view ranging from individuals, families, communities,
nations, world at large together with their diversity at every level and nature and environment
to comprehend the nature of the change.

Ever shortening short termism

The issue seems more one centered on shortening short termism vs the lengthening long
termism. The hectic pace of the change beyond the evolving and absorbing capacity of the
world to adjust, has become relentless and unstoppable because of the shortermism that
drove the West which led the world order since World War II. Also it is not just an
evolutionary change, but seems like a sudden shift from an inherently unstable that was
wrongly believed to be stable, world order, to anarchy. Short termism of the liberal Western
ideas and states have made the west vulnerable against the long termism of the marxist
state of China. A China that did not have to worry about the next elections in its politics and
next quarter results of its companies seem to have had better of the Western world which
was afflicted by both. This is not to say that democracy is no good and autocracy is all good.

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When the world had set out on the paradigm of globalisation, the premise was the final
victory of liberal democracy and free market capitalism over all other institutions and ideas.
But, within a quarter of the century, liberal democracies and rule based market economics
are challenged by China with its strange mix of a Marxist State promising to become less
Marxist and its pretended market economics. The idea of liberal West-centric globalisation
which had allowed the Marxist and autocratic China to operate on par with democratic
nations has done the West and the world in. The US, which engaged China from 1993,
along with the European Union enabled China to enter the world market [World Trade
Organisation] in 2001 for short term gains of stable China’s market for their own growth.
And in 2016, the US and EU began pleading in the WTO that China was not a market
economy at all, with China retorting that the very fact that it was admitted to the WTO meant
that it was a market economy. Just a couple of years before the West had awarded in 1999
the Nobel prize for economics to Amartya Sen who had compared the autocratic China and
democratic India and found that the free market operated in a democracy and not in an
autocracy. Against this background even a blindman would have known in 2001 when the
US admitted China into WTO for its own little short term gains, that the new entrant, a
marxist could never operate a market economy. This short termism in the US/West to gain
economic advantage, has destabilised the geopolitical world order forever. Whether it would
cause a change into another kind of order or land the world in anarchy is not clear.

World without norms of human life

The crux of the Nehru-Mahaswami dialogue is the divergence between rights coupled with
duty centric, non-formal normative life advocated by the world of tradition and the duty free
rights-centric rule based liberal life of the contemporary world. Here it is worth recalling why
Mahatma Gandhi refused to sign HG Wells’ formulation of the human rights declaration.
Gandhi’s refusal to sign it unless it was renamed as the human duties declaration was a
huge warning to the world that was getting mesmerised by the idea of individual and human
rights centred national governments, coordinated by international bodies like the UN. The
result of this contextual love with the rights paradigm was the atomisation of the society,
community and now even families, by unbridled individualism and duty-free individual rights.
The contemporary paradigm of duty-free rights, competition and egotism is a contrast to the
traditional paradigm of rights coupled with duties, contentment and humility. The Mahaswami
said aparigraha [contentment] and nirahambhavana [humility] are the founding principles of
our civilisation. The substitution of basic duties by unbridled rights, of contentment by greedy
competition, of humility by egotism has led to substitution of normative life by a way of life
that has replaced families, communities and societies. Contemporaneity abhors the very
idea of society which is the very source and support for normative life. It is the society and
social norms which had, in the past, ensured the unity and integrity of the families and
community life. With society and non-formal normative life ceasing to be legitimate in the
contemporary West, families which are the basic institutions to socialise an individual into
the larger human social capital, are collapsing. In the US, one half of the first marriages, two
thirds of the second, and three-fourths of the third marriages end in divorce. Less than 30
percent of the families consist of couples with children. With the life of ideas which rule
human life tumbling down, the lifespan of families and marriages are crashing by change
from relation based traditional lifestyle to contract based modern life model. Families have
become households. With the rise in the longevity of human life, and the shortening duration
of households, the burden of taking care of the unemployed, infirm and the elderly has been
ceded by the families to the government which has been forced to take over a large range of
family functions. The government has been forced to nationalise the traditional functions of
families even as modern economics advocates privatisation of the age-old government
functions. This has converted market economics into market society. What is market
economics and what is market society?

Market economics vs market society; civilisational democracy vs liberal democracy

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The difference between market economy and market society is that market economics works
with relation-based lifestyle, market society rests on contract-based modernity. In the former,
the society and family works with the market, while in the latter the society and family too are
replaced by the market. In brief, market society abhors family and community and rests on
contract-based human life. In market society there are only three legitimate institutions, the
state, the individual and the market -- the family and society being just options, not
legitimate. In market economics, in addition to the three institutions of market society, the
family and society are legitimate and important institutions. The mix and identification of
liberal democracy with liberal society has turned the western societies into market societies,
not just market economies. Modern economists tend to view Asian economies as basically
market economies. Asian nations have largely retained and kept their normative civilisational
assets -- families, communities and societies -- aligned to market economics. This social
evolution has happened by trade off between individual rights and duties to the civilisational
collective assets of families and society. The economists regard, in contrast, the Western
and particularly the Anglo-Saxon economies driven by unbridled individualism as market
societies.

The market society concept has undermined, even eliminated the normative civilisational
assets to move beyond market economy to become market societies by contract-based
human life. This happened in the West because of the introduction of the principles of liberal
democracy to turn the society into liberal societies. The liberal democracy is founded on the
Western anthropology of modernity based on unbridled individualism which has undermined
families, communities and societies. This is how market economies have become market
societies in most of the West, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon West which began setting the
rules for the Rest of the world particularly in the era of globalisation. But particularly in Asia,
liberal political ideas have not penetrated deep enough to undermine the civilisational assets
of family, community and society. And so the West does not regard even the world's largest
democracy, India, as a liberal democracy because India’s political ideas have not yet
delegitimised the normative civilisational assets of India. [It is only after the West saw China
emerging as a threat to the democratic world post Covid-19 pandemic, that recently the G-7
has begun working on the Democratic 10 nation collective that included India] A civilisational
democracy operates electoral democracy without destroying its civilisational assets. Asian
democracies which work with the traditional civilisational assets of families, communities and
societies are civilisational. While market economics works in and with civilisational
democracies, the market society is a product of liberal democracy that is sans the
civilisational element. This is one of the reasons for ever increasing short termism in both
liberal democracies and also economics in the West. This has led to more acute and hostile
conflict between eternal values and contemporary rules in the West today.

Eternal civilisational values in an ever changing world

The contemporary world whose vision of life is guided by ever shortening short termism has
no place for lasting or eternal civilisational values which guides even ordinary humans to
think of future generations of one’s own families, and the extraordinary ones to think of future
generations of the entire humanity. The contemporary world exclusively trusts formal rules
and elected institutions and abhors all non-formal norms and normative civilisational
institutions. The new formal and elected institutions can be powerful for a limited period of
time but not for all times to come. Human history is full of lessons about the collapse of all
newer and formal institutions including empires. In contrast, non-formal civilisational
institutions like family and communities have proved viable and durable and have sustained
human life over millennia. Eternal values are nurtured by non-formal civilisational norms and
institutions. The contemporary world’s trust that the elected institution of rule based liberal
democracy as the most stable and durable institution for now and for eternity, is challenged
from outside by China which abhors it. And from within also it is facing a challenge which is

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evident from how divisive the 2020 US Presidential elections was and its outcome. Studies
show In liberal democracies, less than 45 percent of the youths vote and 30 percent never
vote. The unbridled rights granted by liberalism have made the youth so self-centred that
they tend to enjoy their life more and do not even go to the polling booths to vote to
strengthen the roots of the very liberal democracy that grants them the rights. This is clear
enough warning that the shortening of short term values, which hold out no long term vision
or goal for humans encouraged to seek instant and immediate satisfaction, has begun
yielding diminishing and negative returns. It clearly suggests that it is time that the
contemporary world begins to think of recovering the living elements from remnants of the
eternal values it has worked to destroy in the last couple of centuries, particularly the basic
norms for a stable and durable future.

Paradigm shift from Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism

The Western world was running for tens of centuries on anthropocentric ideologies, lifestyle
habits and laws and rules which was founded on humans as the centre of creation which is
drawn from the Genesis in the Bible. Cartesian-Newtonian science extended that to position
man as the master of creation. Following religion and science, political, social and economic
theories of the modern West too internalised the unquestioned ideology of man as the
master of the animate and inanimate worlds. The inhuman invasion of the animal and plant
world by humans over centuries devastating nature and environment led to the revival of
environmental consciousness in the last decades of the 20th century. Even a couple of
decades earlier some western thinkers began questioning anthropocentric ideas. The
process began with Lyn White’s introspective writing in the Science Magazine in 1967 that
the Abrahamic religions with anthropocentric beliefs were incompatible with nature while
pagan faiths -- which included Hinduism -- which worshipped trees, animals and rivers were
environment-compatible. Environmental decay increasingly came to be regarded as the
greatest challenge to human life on the planet. That seeded the birth of biocentric philosophy
in the West which has improved in scope to become ecocentric philosophy. Ecocentrism
uses the study of ecology to demonstrate the importance of non-living elements of the
environment. Biocentrism focuses on living elements of the environment. A section of the
thinking world has since begun to realise that environmental destruction cannot be stopped
by state and global regulations and it called for an environmentally compatible philosophy
and way of life and habits. Animism which was regarded as inferior pagan faith is now seen
as a high philosophy. Ancient Indian philosophy was totally environment centric as it
regarded the entire creation as divine. Hindu religious text Isavasya Upanishad which
proclaimed, as translated by Mahatma Gandhi, that ‘everything in creation down to the tiniest
atom is divine” which emphasised the biocentric philosophy of ancient India. And speaking of
importance of Isavasya Upanishad,Gandhi said, “"If all the Upanishads and all the other
scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the
Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever”. It is this
ancient wisdom that everything down to the tiniest atom is divine is emerging as the philosophy
defining the ecocentric perspective which the Western world has begun developing recently. The
contemporary civilization which rests on anthropocentric ideologies that were the foundation for
short term goals for humans is becoming a dead end. This is now forcing the world to look at the
past, distant and deep past, for ideas to align humans and nature, for the survival of humans.

Relevance of “The Malady and Remedy”

As the contemporary world of ever-shortening short termism seems to be failing and falling
apart, there is a clear need to look for an alternative worldview founded on more durable,
more sustainable, more environmentally compatible eternal values from which there has
been a massive disconnect particularly for the last couple of centuries. At a time when the
current alternative ideas are merely a continuation from where we are and at best an
extension or the compounding of the problems that the human societies face, “The Malady

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and Remedy” is the adumbration of the other mind that is civilisational. It offers a different
philosophy, perspective and view of life than the one into which the human societies have
been evangelised into by ideological historians who saw the world and human societies as
irretrievably and helplessly moving under a linear formula. The ancient Indian view
contradicts the current view that time and human life is purely linear. So long as the human
mind is allowed to introspect, time can never be linear. For, introspection is not just a
process of questioning the past from the experience of the present, but it is equally a
function of questioning the present by recalling the past. In contemporary thought, while
questioning and dismissing the past is regarded as progress, the questioning of the present
and recalling the past is regarded., quite wrongly, as retrograde. Consequently an
individualistic and atomised world that has surrendered and consequently is enslaved by the
systems driven by powerfully evangelising thoughts and mighty institutions which just run on
the counter pulls of action and reaction, cause and effect brought about by ever shortening
short termism, is in a constant and compelling state of flux. The result is that the
contemporary generation of humans is driven wholly by rights consciousness without a
sense of moral duty to any one in the present or the future. Consequently, there is
tremendous damage to future human generations and also the environment as the present
generation does not feel it is under a moral duty to the next and future generation. The mass
of people without future obligation to none, are in a state of constant flux. It calls for
reconnecting with the lost connection with intellectual and moral gravitational force to
stabilise it. That is where the text The Malady and the Remedy seems relevant.

Keeping the flame alive

It would have undoubtedly called for extraordinary spiritual conviction and moral courage for
the Mahaswami to have responded to Pandit Nehru like he had done in those times, with his
non-formal normative remedy to the contemporary malady of crisis of moral character which
is now widely seen as apprehended by Nehru. But with the contemporary world losing its
traditional bearings more now as compared to the 1950s, even now it calls for equal courage
for [publisher name] to recall and republish the dialogue. What the Mahaswami did was to
keep the flame of the remedy in thought and in the life of his adherents. The remedy he had
suggested in the text was not just in theory. It was and is still lived and exemplified by a
small core of people who hold on to the twin principles of Aparigraha [contentment] and
Niragambhavana [humility] which the Mahaswami holds as the moral gravitational force to
stabilise the human society that is clearly falling apart. That formulae for remedy which is
delegitimised and consigned to libraries and monuments in most nations is still in living form
in India It is our duty to continue and to recall what he said, and keep the flame of eternal
truth, which is the root of human societies, alive in thought and in living form. It is already
becoming too late for the advanced societies to recall their roots which is threatening the
collapse of their civilisations. In most Asian and non-western societies however the flame of
ancient philosophies, beliefs and lifestyle is still alive. Bharat is the foremost and fortunate
among the societies where the most ancient ideas and lifestyle are still in a living form in
contemporary India however delegitimised, disregarded and dismissed they are as out of
date. A small core of men and women have, by the force of their moral conviction and
intellectual determination, and not by any organised effort, kept alive the flame of what the
Mahaswami has conceptualised as the Sanatana Dharma. The republication of The Malady
and the Remedy is an endeavour to continue to keep that flame alive, glow more and
become brighter to spread light in a world that is becoming darker by the day by the ever
deepening short termism of contemporary human minds and institutions.

S. Gurumurthy
Editor, Thuglak
Chennai

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