At present, India lies between two currents that have sometimes generated some turbulence: one aims at preserving its past, impregnated with spirituality; the other tends to forget or minimize the past and is concerned about economic progress using the western model, like Japan or China. A clear example of the latter is found in Mr. Amartya Sen, who intends to embody this current through his book “The argumentative Indian” and even denies the existence of a Hindu civilization. Mr. Sen has been awarded the Nobel Prize in economy and therefore is highly respected and widely read, but he completely ignores what a Philosophy of History may be and the danger it represents for a civilization to neglect its spiritual tradition.

In order to rectify this mistake, I would like to refer to a basic principle in my Philosophy of History which I consider essential in order to understand the culture and the spirit of India. This principle asserts that each time looks at the past from a particular perspective that responds to the beliefs in fashion at the moment. That is to say that the past is not fix, but changing according to the interpreter’s view. Nowadays, the historical process is usually seen as obeying the economic laws. This principle, originally Marxist, today experiences uneasily natural acceptance by capitalism and the modern mind in general. However, the point is that if we apply this belief, so material and earthly, to India, we will see its history, culture and spirit completely disfigured, as the incentive that has motivated the Hindu people is, essentially, spiritual. The clearest example is found in the Hindu period, which has nothing to do with the economic laws and which survives in the mind and the heart of all Indian people.

Many of us view India as the Planet’s spiritual reserve and tremble before the possibility that this region might be carried away by the fanatical and ruthless materialism that rules the Western world. In this case, the world would be left without a spiritual refuge, for it is certain that if India is dragged by such material trend at the expense of the moral and religious tradition that has supported its social structure for thousands of years, it would experience an even greater catastrophe than any of the invasions it has suffered in the past, because its entire civilization would be at stake.

Its inconsistent and uncontrolled demographic growth would necessarily contribute to a worse situation. It would be catastrophic indeed for India to replace its system of castes in which knowledge and virtues were decisive with the system of castes not declared but in force in the Western world based only on economic differences, which is the lowest and most humiliating social system man has ever had to bear. It would be fatal for India to fall in this plutocracy and replace its high religious aspirations and its moral values with pecuniary values.

India must not forget the Dharma, which has been the main driving force of its civilization. And nor must anyone who means to get to know this culture, because India without the Dharma is an unrecognizable figure. This Dharma is essential because it aims at improving and transforming man intrinsically, substantially, truly, because it centers upon the human element which builds civilization.

The Western world has forgotten that human element, that inner growth that is to sustain and give life to outer growth. It is to be expected that India should not fall into this oblivion. Like it did not fall in the past, it must manage a balance between inner and outer growth without mistaking the means and the ends like the Western world has. The Hindu people have succeeded in finding and expressing these ends in their sublime philosophies: Sat-sit-ananda, that is, Knowledge, full existence and happiness, are the high ideals that have supported this civilization. I am not suggesting a return to an irreversible past, but to the inexhaustible sources of inspiration, to its perennial philosophy that was able to produce periods of remarkable creativity.

When thinking and talking about myths, we must be careful not to fall in the perspective induced by scientificism, which makes us believe that the only real thing is what we can prove scientifically. This is outrageous because all the spiritual reality, including philosophy, music and all the arts, would become non-existent. Well, if we define the myth, as I believe we should, as “the art (not the science) of expressing religious and cosmological conceptions and moral archetypes”, we would suddenly find ourselves before a tremendous reality that weighs more in our conscience than concrete reality.

Thus we have that the most important thing about the myth is not its material existence but its validity in the soul as an inspiring and exemplary element, as a superior instance. Vivekananda, maximum figure of modern Hinduism, comes to warn us that it loses importance whether Krishna itself existed or not, because what is crucial is its teachings portrayed in the Gita. Such is the matter with the animals we find in the Hindu epic, whose value and reality consist in their exemplary behavior.

This is not difficult at all to understand for the Hindu people, as both Hinduism and Buddhism are not founded on a system of beliefs in outer realities, but on the purpose of getting to know and improving human conscience. Therefore, these doctrines do not need any dogmas but personal experiences. Radhakrishnan explains this matter by asserting that Hinduism is not defined by a common doctrine but by a common search.

Now, if India is invaded by the new myths produced by these days, like soccer or cricket players, and substitutes them for Rama, we can start to worry about the fate of the spiritual reserve on this planet. The fact that the huge and saturating apparatus of Hollywood has been emulated by India leads to the prelude of an imminent mythicide.