New avatar for old

crusades

While the West may want to see the global

fight against terrorism as a fight between secular and fundamentalist forces, it is
perhaps possible that many in the Islamic world see it as a new phase of the old
crusades. This only makes sense if one retraces the history of monotheism.

It all began in ancient Mesopotamia, where every city had its own god. The idea of a
city-god helped unite people from different tribes. When cities fought each other,
victory was declared in the name of the city god, and the god of the subjugated city
was either destroyed or simply made part of the victorious god’s council. Thus large
cities had councils of many gods, each god representing a tribe or a district, with one
all-powerful god belonging to the most powerful tribe or city presiding over all of
them.

Then, one day, four thousand years ago, in the city of Ur, a young man called
Ibrahim (aka Abraham) had a vision. His father Azar made idols of wood and stone
and sold them in the city. Ibrahim found it hard to believe that these images could be
gods. They who could not drink water could not possibly quench the thirst of
humanity. He argued with his father who threatened to stone him to death or burn
him alive for his radical ideas. Finally, disgusted by his father’s refusal to abandon
idolatry, Ibrahim broke all images built by his father and ran away to seek God, the
only true divine, Allah, who did not need a form, whose glory could not be contained
in an image. Thus was born monotheism.
Ibrahim had a wife called Sarah, but no children. An angel visited them and said she
would bear a son. She chuckled, as she was too old to be a mother, and advised
Ibrahim to take her handmaiden, Hagar, as his wife. Hagar bore Ibrahim a son
Ishmael and shortly after, despite her age, Sarah, became pregnant, and gave birth
to Isaac. Thus, she who had little faith in Abraham’s God, realised his power, his
grace, and his wrath. He made her mother, but ensured her son would be the
younger one, obliged to bow to the handmaiden’s son. But Sarah chose pride over
peace, and forced Ibraham to cast Hagar and her son away. Hagar moved to the
desert and would have died of thirst but Allah pointed her to a well of water known as
Zam Zam. Later, on Allah’s orders, Ibrahim visited Hagar and built with the help of
Ismael, not far from the well of Zam Zam, the Kabah to honour Allah, around which
would rise the city of Mecca.

From Ishmael descended the Arabs who spread across Arabia. From Isaac
descended the Jews who went to Egypt, where the pharaoh eventually enslaved
them. Three thousand years ago, a prophet of God called Moses rose amongst the
Jews. He led them out of slavery and took them to the Promised Land in Levant.
Here, after many years of wandering, the twelve Jewish tribes finally established a
kingdom known as Israel with its capital in Jerusalem. After many kings like Saul and
David and Solomon, the Jewish kingdom collapsed and the Jewish tribes were
scattered across the world.

Two thousand years ago, from amongst the Jews rose a man called Jesus, in the
lineage of King David. He rejected the Jewish view that God only cared for the
Chosen People and that God was a stern father who demanded absolute obedience.
He said God was a loving father who invited every human being to his house, even
when they broke his laws. His radical views upset the Jewish clergy who had him
arrested and crucified. His followers said that he resurrected himself three days after
his death and promised to return at the time of rapture, when the world would come
to an end, and lead all the faithful to the Kingdom of his Father, the one true God.

They also said that he, who had defied death, had also been immaculately
conceived in the womb of a virgin called Mary, who was to marry a man called
Joseph. They declared Jesus was Christ, the messiah of God, sent to suffer for the
sins of humanity. Their word became the gospel, and they became known as the
apostles. Their tales and interpretations of what Jesus said became very popular
more in the West than in the East, first amongst Roman slaves, then Roman nobility
and eventually Roman royalty. This is how the polytheistic Roman Empire
transformed into the monotheistic Holy Roman Empire. Cynics say religious
conversion was the only way the Emperor could bind the crumbling empire together.
But Christendom was not united. The Christians who lived in Byzantium in the east
consciously separated themselves from the Christians who lived in the west and
owed greater allegiance to Rome.

Then about 1,500 years ago, an Arab trader called Muhammad was approached by
the angel Jibreel and asked to recite the words of God. In a series of such
encounters, the Quran was revealed to him and he was declared as the final prophet
who would bring humanity to the right path. He was even taken on a horse that could
fly to Heaven where he was told the right way to be a Muslim. Prayers thereafter had
to be offered facing, not Jerusalem, but Mecca. In the Prophet’s lifetime, Islam
became a dominant force in Arabia. Soon after his death, the Muslims were divided
as the Sunnis who followed the path forged by the Prophet Muhammad’s father-in-
law and the Shias who follow the path forged by the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-
law. But this division did not stop the astonishingly rapid spread of Islam from Arabia
through Persia to Africa and thence to Asia and Europe. It eventually met stiff
resistance in Christian Europe.

A thousand years ago, resistance eventually gave rise to a series of war campaigns
known as Crusades led by Christian Europe determined to regain control over the
Holy Land of Levant, specifically the city of Jerusalem, from the Muslims. The
Crusades nearly lasted for centuries and finally ended with the fall of Constantinople
five hundred years ago. With that the Muslims, or rather Ottoman sultans, were
declared the masters of the East and the Christians had to be satisfied with the
West.

In the last 500 years, Christian pride resurrected itself with enlightenment,
industrialisation, colonisation, and finally capitalism. It changed the course of the
world forever. America came into being, and colonies finally gave way to secular
nation states, but not before two devastating World Wars in the 20th century. One
significant outcome of the World War II was the carving out of the erstwhile Ottoman
Empire into a number of Muslim states, and one Jewish state – Israel.

Many Muslims see the establishment of Israel on lands, which for centuries belonged
to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, as Christian revenge for their defeat in the crusades.
For it made no sense why the Christians who for centuries persecuted Jewish people
as descendants of Christ killers would want go out of their way to help them.
Perhaps to allay the guilt of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust during which millions
of Jews were systematically slaughtered by the Nazi regime of Germany. Or maybe,
it was the result of Christian nation states being arm twisted by powerful Jewish
bankers who realised it was important to have a nation state of their own, after
centuries of being homeless and persecuted.

The rise of the Jewish state and the domination of Euro-American commercial
powers in the affairs of the Middle East, especially to control the lucrative oil there,
spurred the rise of radical Islam that rejects all things modern (read Western), first in
Iran and now across almost every country with a Muslim population. Though never
admitted, the Gulf War and the Afghan War and now the opposition to ISIS, is being
seen by many as a new form of the medieval crusade. Much as the West wants to
deny it, for the Muslim world secularism, rationality, liberalism and democracy are
just new avatars of their old Christian foes.

What’s your Sanskaar?

Don’t use the word culture. Use the word sanskaar. And see how the organization
responds. The two words, rather spontaneously, evoke very different reactions
amongst Indians who straddle the modern and traditional worlds continuously.

When we use the word culture, we immediately have images of cultural programmes
held in schools and at associations where children do folk dance and sing classical
songs. Its all about performance of some traditional art form. But is that all culture is?
A performance meant to entertain us during festival. Something nostalgic and quaint,
far removed from the daily grind of the workplace. It is at best an ornament, good to
have, not essential.

When we use the word sanskaar, the reaction is rather different. For sanskaar refers
to upbringing in India. It is the Key Performance Indicator of parenting to most
Indians. It is an indicator of family values. It shows how civilized and cultured we are.

The word sanskaar is a wordplay typical of Sanskrit. It is a combination of three

roots: First: saras, which is means fluid. Second: sama, which means cyclical or
closed loop. Third: ka, which means questioning, an indicator of humanity as well as
divinity in the Vedas. Sanskara is then how the human mind makes sense of this
cyclical world of birth and death, which we all inhabit. It is an indicator of the value
placed on human existence by the family one belongs to. Every organisation needs
sanskaar to show the world whether it is connected to society at large and to the
environment as a whole.

In India, sanskaar is created by simply following rites of passage, also called

sanskaar. In other words, both the means to create culture and culture itself mean
the same thing. Typical sanskaras are: marriage, childbirth, piercing the child’s ear,
tonsure of the child’s hair, the first eating of solid food, first day at school, and finally,
death. Sanskaras are also linked to how festivals are celebrated, how food is served,
how the house is kept, how daughters, sons, elders, guests, servants, strangers and
enemies are treated. Most rituals, like all rituals, have symbolic meaning or have no
meaning at all. The action needs to be performed, but what is key to the ritual
performance is the underlying emotion of the action – the bhaav. Ritual with bhaav is
advised. Ritual without bhaav is tolerated. Bhaav without ritual is unperceivable.

Modern management ignores bhaav as that cannot be measured. It focuses on rules

(niti) and tradition (riti). In this approach, culture becomes not an expression of ideas
but a rigid code of conduct that the modern man has to revolt against in order to be
free. At best it becomes something to turn to nostalgically. And it is this approach to
culture that is increasingly becoming popular.

In the Puranas, Shiva is unable to appreciate the sanskaar of his father-in-law

Daksha for Shiva values emotions more than rituals while Daksha values rituals over
emotion. The confrontation is violent.

Culture is an outcome of any human interaction. There cannot be an organisation

without culture. There are levels of human culture of course in the Puranas.
• The default culture (Level 0) is the animal culture where natural instincts (prakriti) is
indulged, where might is right, where domination and conflict thrive and it is all about
packs and herds and grabbing nourishment and security. This is seen in
organisations where there is breakdown of leadership.
• The next type of culture (Level 1) is one where the human-animal is domesticated
using rules and rewards and recognition. This is seen in highly controlled
workspaces.
• Another type of culture is one where one abandons all things material and gives up
all relationship – the monastic culture (Level 2).
• Then comes the ecosystem (Level 3) where people are continuously encouraged,
not compelled, to be sensitive to others voluntarily for their own emotional and
intellectual wellbeing. This is sanskriti, where everyone knows how to behave with
men, women, those older and younger, those related and unrelated, strangers and
colleagues. This is aspirational.

The questions to ponder over is: is cultural critical? Do modern institution think of
culture only when the going is good? Do they see culture as a lever that enables
success? More importantly, if the going is bad, does culture matter? Will culture help
tide over a crisis, or will it be the cause of crisis?

In stories, sanskar is not always profitable. In the Ramayana, Surpanakha’s

sanskaar allows her to approach a married man for pleasure; Sita’s sanskaar
compels her to risk personal security and feed a hungry sage who turns out to be
demon; Ram’s sanskaar forces him to abandon his beloved innocent wife as she is
deemed queen of stained reputation. In the Mahabharata, Draupadi abandons all
sanskaar and becomes violent and bloodthirsty when she is publicly abused and all
family decorum is abandoned by her vile brothers-in-law, the Kauravas. Yet, this very
same Draupadi recalls sanskaar when she forgives her sister-in-law Dushala’s
lecherous husband, Jayadhrata, even though he tries to abduct her.

As long as culture is treated synthetically as an ornament of the good times it can

never ever add real value. Only when we recognize culture as sanskaar, an indicator
of our humanity, does it becomes a critical to organisational survival.
 Time, Timelessness and the idea of Charity

The biblical, or Abrahamic, worldview informs the Western view, just as the Hindu
worldview informs the Indian worldview. The bible speaks of a beginning and an end,
Genesis and Apocalypse. Thus the biblical worldview is finite. The Vedas speak of a
world that is anadi, without beginning, and without end, ananta. Thus the Hindu
worldview is infinite. What does this mean in the practical sense?

It means that the biblical worldview focuses on solving problems using material
things that have a finite existence, while the Hindu worldview focuses solving
problems using psychological ideas that challenge material finiteness. The Bible
speaks of a Promised Land that will be granted to the Chosen people. It also speaks
of blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the earth. The vocabulary is about
having, or not having. By contrast, Ramayana and Mahabharata end with Ram
giving up his kingdom and walking into the river Sarayu and Pandavas giving up their
kingdom and walking up the Himalayas. It’s all about letting go.

Western society focuses on the material more than the mental, because the material
is empirical. Everything is viewed in terms of wealth, and holidays. He who has
money to spend and time to enjoy is blessed indeed. Monastic orders in the West
therefore embracing poverty and serving the poor to uplift them from the status of
‘have-not’ to ‘have’. Equality is about making creating a world where there are no
‘have-nots’.

In Indian thought, there is tension between ‘bhoga’ (satisfying hunger/desire) and

‘yoga’ (outgrowing hunger/desire). Those who chose the former path lived in human
settlements and those who chose the latter path went into caves. Indian philosophy
rejects the idea of equality as it assumes the world will always have ‘haves’ and
‘have-nots’ but as time passes, the ‘haves’ become ‘have-nots’ and the ‘have-nots’
become ‘haves’, and the wise discover that happiness follows when one outgrows
the desire to have ‘having’ or the regret of ‘not-having’.

This subtle difference is often overlooked by scholars who write about Indian or
Western philosophy. The human mind refuses to accept rebirth, hence change. We
think this moment is permanent. We use Western ideas as benchmarks and
templates to explain Indian thought. This is evident in writings about Hindu
philosophy in colonial times. There are strong attempts to explain Hindus to the West
in Western terms: thus there are concepts like the ‘Gospel of the Gita’ or the ‘Hindu
Church’.

Nowadays, there is great popularity amongst Hindu outfits to do ‘seva’ or serve

people. The assumption is: if you want to be spiritual, you must serve people. Placed
in a biblical framework it makes sense, for it means you are aligning with God’s
commandments and following the path of love preached by Jesus. But in the Hindu
framework, it becomes a bit problematic. For it is an act done to generate good
karma: in other words seva (service) for meva (fat). Thus there is nothing
unconditional or selfless about it.

In Sikhism, the gurus said that the person who gives service must thank the person
who receives service. Why? Because the charity giver gets credit while the charity
receiver gets bound in debt, or ‘rin’. Debt fetters one to worldly life, and becomes an
obstacle to liberation, as one is obliged to repay debt in this or another lifetime.

In a global world order, we want to homogenize spirituality. And the process of

homogenizing spirituality, we try to standardize worldviews. More often than not, the
worldview adopted is the finite time-bound Western one and not the infinite timeless
Indian one.
 Differential Values

Senior managers are forced into workshops on ‘respect’ and ‘integrity’ as part of
value week. I ask the trainer why is this being done and she says it is to reinforce
values. I ask the trainer does she genuinely believe that senior managers need to be
trained on the subject like domesticated animals. She chuckles and says she is
simply complying with the high command’s directives. So I ask the high command.
And the high command says this is global corporate ritual – you list a set of values in
a workshop, you put it on the walls of your office, you conduct training programs, you
create literature that leave people in no doubt what your values are and you make
sure you rate people during appraisals on desirable values demonstrated. Does it
make employees different, even better, human beings from what they were before
they joined the company? No comment, says the high command.

More often than not, these values are nothing extraordinary. Most firms around the
world share the same few words in their list of values: respect, integrity, loyalty,
diversity, inclusiveness, leadership, responsibility, customer centricity, to name a
few. However across the world, especially amongst social and environmental
activists, all corporations – even those, or rather especially those, highly rated in
stock markets and business journals around the world – are seen as the agents of
evil capitalism that reduces everything and everyone into a commodity or a
consumer. Hardly value-based.

I am still trying to figure it out. What does value-based organisation mean? Are there
organisations out there that claim they are without value? Are there shareholders out
there who will reject profit and let a company go bankrupt in order to uphold values?
In my view, every organisation claims it is value-based until it gets caught.

Not long ago, there is a talented, successful and charming sport star that was brand
ambassador to a very renowned auditing and consultancy firm. Then came a sex
scandal and it was revealed that the sports star was living a double life. The firm
immediately dropped him like a hot potato. Today the firm uses animals and plants
instead in its advertising; no more unpredictable humans.

No one walks around saying they are villains. No one walks around claiming they
have no values. Everyone assumes they have values. Problem is that their values
are different from other people’s values. For many spiritual people, any one who has
a profit-motive has no values, an idea that leaves many value-based management
gurus red faced.

We can trace this corporate practice of stating and reinforcing values publicly to the
biblical story of God carving benchmark behaviours expected by the tribe on stone
tablets. This listing of expected conducted is not part of the Hindu scheme of things
and so makes little sense to Indians. Non-Indians sense that. They see Indians as
being too mercurial, shifty and in their words manipulative and inconsistent. At an
International conference a speaker said rather candidly, “When I lose money in USA
or UK, I say it is a bad investment. But when I lose money in India, I say I have been
cheated.” This is corroborated by the low ranking of Indian companies in an index
related to contractual sanctity. And so – in acts that reek of cultural prejudice – many
multinational companies feel it is their duty to have extra value workshops for their
Indian partners.

Traditionally, in India, no one spoke of values as a fixed behavioural output. People

spoke of ‘bhaav’ which had two meanings: first, emotional intent that guided an
action (kis bhaav se kaam kar rahe ho?) and second, value given to a person or
thing (usko jyada bhaav mat do!). Value is subjective, based on an individual’s
emotional maturity and perception of the context. Value is not objective, pre-
determined by an external party and enforced on a community.

Take the case of respect: In the Western worldview, everyone must be treated
equally; in the Chinese/Japenese worldview, respect is expressed ritually in
deference to a well respected system of hierarchy; in the Indian worldview, it is all
fluid, depending on power structures as perceived by the individual and shifting
depending on the emotional maturity of the individual. Of course, the West values its
framework of equality as superior to other frameworks.

All this makes values a complex issue that need to take cognisance of cultural
realities – unless of course, we reject diversity and cling to the monotheistic
mythology of one God, one truth, and one way of life