Curtailment of Indic quest of power & its implications

The following is a video of the meet of Kalyan Rishi with Alexander, from the popular Chanakya serial aired on DoorDarshan (India's national channel)

As we heard, Kalyan Rishi warns Alexander about the futility of his warring and conquering nature, and tells him to conquer his mind instead. Another point the revered Rishi makes is that a state can be controlled with the head at the capital and not at the fringes of the state (w.r.t. Alexander's presence in NW India & not in Macedonia)

If the account of the meet expressed in the serial is true, then drawing an extrapolation of what the Rishi said can lead us to two thoughts prevalent at the time:

1. Harnessing of ambitions of other people's territory was discouraged.
2. Any ambition was curtailed and people were trained to control their natural urges.

Now, it is true that overt ambition can lead to a disaster. But some amount of ambition is required to get some things done. Besides, ambition coupled to a sustained chain of efforts has often lead to great achievements in the human society. A lukewarm ambition and a lukewarm approach to getting things done will only develop a status quo society, a society of moderate achievers and few spectacular achievements. Which approximately describes our condition today. We seemed to have taken the Rishi's preachings to the other extreme.

A specific quanta of ambition, a desire for success should be as inseparable as the five senses of the body. And as was said in the holy Gita about the sense organs: - "that they need to be controlled, not suppressed." So should be that quanta of ambition and desire for success.

Because of our emphasis on controlling desires and not allowing the positive feedback loop of more and more ambition take root in at least limited sections of the society, while our civilization has lived long because of more energy spent in the basic necessities of living, we have a few unintended consequences:

1. Once a territory of the nation was lost, and a constantly new national identity was created in the lost territory (ala Afghanistan and other reputed cases,) it has proved difficult to create the national fervour to get the territories back.
2. With lust for power in others' territories stopped, and assuming that such lust for power is unavoidable by the ruling classes after a stretch of time, the only way to get more power was to grab it from fellow people. Could this be the reason for large amounts of infighting among Indian kings?
3. Lack of sense of strategic importance of certain geographical locations. For instance, our inability to control entries from the Khyber pass vis-a-vis the Chinese creation of the Great Wall (although it failed in its immediate objective, but 10/10 for the effort).
4. Lack of the above sense is also responsible for the inability to get diplomatic allies and India digging its lone furrow.
   
5. Lack of extraordinary achievements in fields of sciences beyond certain blips of time.

Time to let loose a controlled quest of power so that we can rise above from being a status quoist power, and realise an India that not only we are content at looking up to, but our allies would love to befriend and our enemies would fear to face.

Defining power in Schindler's list: A dharmic perspective.

Schindler's list is a 1993 movie about a German businessman Oscar Schindler who goes to Krakow to take advantage of people thrust into a Jewish ghetto. He first begins to use the Jews as laborers for his factories, taking advantage of the mandated lower salaries for Jewish laborers as compared to European ones. (The laborers themselves get nothing, salary is pocketed by the SS) But when he sees what they have to undergo under his fellow Germans, he is moved and sets to right his wrongs.

There is a conversation that he holds between a German SS officer Amon Goth in the second half of the movie over a round of drinks. Goth gets drunk easily while Schindler remains sober. The following ensues:

(Goth collapses while trying to sit in a chair.. )

Schindler: Why do you drink so much? Your liver is going to explode... like a hand grenade.

Goth: You know, when I look at you.. I watch you (gasping).. you're never drunk. Oh that's .. that's real control. Control is power.. that's power.

Schindler: Is that why they fear us?

Goth: (inaudible) We kill them that is why they fear us..

Schindler: They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. When a man commits a crime, we should know that if we haven't killed anybody, we feel good. When we kill him ourselves, we feel even better. That is not power though,.. that's justice. It's different than power. Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't.

Goth: You think that's power?

(Schindler coming closer to Goth..)

Schindler: That's what the emperors had. When a man stole something, he's brought before the emperor. He throws himself on the ground and begs for mercy. He knows he's going to die. And the emperor pardons him. He's a worthless man, he lets him go.

Goth: I think you are drunk.

Schindler: That's power. That is power.

Dharmic Perspective: Two aspects of power are thus mentioned in the conversation. One aspect of power comes straight from the left brain (the logical brain). That is of control. Logically thinking, controlling a person's actions is power. And that control is maintained by a strict law and order, a top down enforcement of power. The pinnacle of the power pyramid controls the layer below it, that layer controls the succeeding layer and so on till at the bottom of the pyramid, the aam junta is controlled. The SS officer in the above conversation supports this view of power.

But, if we tweak the right brain a bit and be more creative with the interpretation of power, then there are other, more subtle, more humane and more effective ways of projecting power. That is shown in the example given by Oscar Schindler. An emperor of a kingdom has all the military might and executive control that he can have. He can execute a criminal if he wishes to. But, if the criminal has realized his blunder, and if the king releases him, there is hope that the criminal can improve. A life is saved thus, and life is precious. This is also a type of control, but of an indirect kind, which coerces the people to improve themselves rather than they being directed to from above.

This is a rare dharmic perspective that is hardly found in movies these days. Hats off to Steven Spielberg.