Sri.B.S.Raghavan is a very distinguished and venerable nonagenarian who lives in Chennai, India. B. S. Raghavan joined the West Bengal IAS cadre in 1952 and was the Commissioner of various Departments. He also served as the Chief Secretary of Tripura. He was Director, Political and Security Policy Planning in the Union Home Ministry and the Secretary, National Integration Council during the period of the first four Prime Ministers. He was a US Congressional Fellow and Policy Adviser to UN (FAO), and Chairman of three UN Committees. He has been chief executive of four major public sector enterprises. He is now a columnist and author, connected with social service and educational organisations.
I was both flattered and honoured indeed when I received the email below from him with a comment on my blogpost yesterday on the subject-line. I reproduce below the correspondence between us.
On Tue, Aug 3, 2021 at 8:04 PM sudarshan madabushi <mksudarshan2002@yahoo.co.in> wrote:
https://mksudarshans.blog/2021/08/03/dharma-kshetre-kurukshetre/
Shri Sudarshan: Very often, our English education and proneness to succumb to the spell of imported phrases and concepts emanating abroad become an impediment to exercising clear thinking. So also is the case with phrases like Liberals and Conservatives. You say there is NO pious middle path. There is,if you realise that no Deva nor Asura is wholly 100 percent that: There is a bit of Asura in every Deva and Deva in every Asura. We have many examples in our epics, puranas and itihasas, as you very well know. The middle path is, in realisation of that, NOT to take a dogmatic view of anything but, as Thiruvalluvar said 3000 years ago, குணம் நாடி குற்றமும் நாடி அவற்றுள் மிகை நாடி மிக்க கொளல். Lord Krishna in Gita lays stress on swadhyay — looking within ourselves, self-introspection, to reduce our brute component and enlarge our human component. In short, to know that there’s no absolute black nor absolute white, no either-or. Then the middle path will automatically emerge.
B S Raghavan
Dear Sir,
Thank you for freely sharing your thoughts upon reading my blog . Sir, Your wisdom shines through and so does your faith in the goodness of humanity. I salute you. 🙏
While like you, I too am a long-term optimist , at times when I witness the contemporary events of our world … such as the ongoing “culture wars” both in India and abroad that I speak about in my blog … I cannot sometimes help feelings of both outrage and despair overwhelming me.
Not everyone who is a combatant in the Culture Wars of world is aware of the presence, as you said, of both Asura and Deva forces within oneself. If they did, they wouldn’t be fighting the war in the first place.
Sir, whether it is the classic Western battlefields where Liberal and Conservative are engaged in an epic battle with each other, or, whether it is Kurukshetra War in modern India between Religious and Secularist/Irreligious/ adharmic ideologies that we see clashing amongst us almost daily in some incident or other flaring up somewhere in our land, the antagonists on one side look upon the adversary as pure Asura — their own side however they see as pure Deva only. For the Devas on this side of the cultural battlefront, it is always the other side that is evil Asura. This constant “othering” is, in fact, the main reason why the Culture War in India is descending into unprecedented belligerence being shown by both sides which stoutly deny giving any quarter to each other. This is both in the national theatre of war as well as in the regional arenas like my own state of Tamilnadu.
In a situation like this when there is so much polarisation in ideas and ideals, institutions communities and regions — why, even inside the very mindset— amongst us all, Culture Warriors, even the sane and sensitive ones who might otherwise be seeking the Deva within oneself and striving to overcome the Asura lurking within their hearts, find that they can no more adopt the “Middle Path” than the Pandavas did against the Kauravas.
There comes a time, Sir … and it is indeed sad, unfortunate and tragic when it does …when it becomes clear just as it did in the Bhagavath Gita, which Krishna, in fact, explained to Arjuna in 700 shlokas and 18 Chapters, that black is black and white is white … and simply contemplating upon the grey is not going to be the final solution to the Culture War at hand but fighting it certainly is.
In the war of Kurukshetra, the victors emerged finally as Devas and the vanquished were Asuras. Such is the nature of all Dharma Yuddha … and the Culture Wars being fought now in India today are not an exception.
With deep respects,
Daasoham 🙏
Sudarshan