“Dharma Kshetre, Kurukshetre….!”

“Dharma Kshetre, Kurukshetre….!”… with those very stirring words does the famous war scene in the Bhagavath-Gita open in the epic Mahabharata! They herald the titanic struggle between the forces of Dharma and Adharma, Righteousness and Unrighteousness, between eternal Good and eternal Evil!

Kurukshetra, the killing fields of bloody but righteous wars, is perhaps the best metaphor to describe the civilisational India of the past that is to be found in our great epics and puraanas. Those were the Cultural Wars where Devas (virtuous gods) ceaselessly fought the Asuras (un-Dhaarmic daemons).

Today too in India, we see Cultural Wars being fought constantly in the hearts and minds of the peoples … It takes place in many theatres — in political and civil engagement, in schools and universities, in the pages of newspapers and in the wide open cyber-spaces of social and electronic media. As a foreign observer of Indian Cultural Wars , Koenrad Elst, writes: “In India, the culture wars that get the most attention … mainly concern religious and national symbols, the definitions of Hinduism and Secularism, caste, history and … the school curriculum”. He then goes on to say this about the way Indians fight their culture war … “the warring parties foam at the mouth and even indulge in ‘divisive’ or ‘anti-national’ activities that can ultimately cause civil war and the nation’s disintegration”. (“Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars (2019).

I used to be once only a rather disinterested spectator myself of the Culture Wars in India. But with every rising day in these times, I have grown greatly concerned about the virulence and frequency of these culture battles amongst the hostile camps in our country. I have been entertaining the thought that nowhere else in the world is the intensity of Culture Wars felt more strongly and painfully than in India. And that is why this info-graphic chart below that I chanced upon today leaves me aghast with disbelief! Please do take a good look at it.

I was all along under the impression that the KURUKSHETRA of all Culture Wars was here in India !

Now, I feel I have been robbed of a distinction I thought belonged to India, my country … i.e. as the Dharma-Kshetra where the clash of Devatas and Asuras was pitched on a truly magnificent Olympian scale.

I am wrong . We seem to have strict competition from 8 other formidable countries of the world!

It is no surprise at all, however, that in atheistic, dictatorial and non-democratic countries (where perhaps Asuras reign supreme?) like China and Russia for example … or within out-and-out Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran … there are hardly signs of any Culture Wars, at least not in the strict sense of the term.

Be that all as it may, one thing should indeed become very clear to us: Wherever we are in this world, there is no escaping from the individual choice we have to make as citizens of our own respective countries : Are we going to be on the side of the Liberals or the Conservatives? Unfortunately there is no pious middle path to take and no way to duck the cultural partisanship that we must confront — for, please believe me, Devas are Devas and Asuras are Asuras , and never the twain shall meet …

Sudarshan Madabushi