BENGALURU: Deep questions are being asked and I think we should, from the beginning, consider most objectively what is actually taking place. There is general deterioration; of that there is no question. Morally, religiously, the old values have completely gone. There is a great disturbance and discontent in every part of the world. They are questioning the purpose of education, purpose of man’s existence altogether, not only in a very limited manner, as it is being done in this country, but also extensively, deeply. And one can see, both in the West and in this country, that this questioning, this challenge is not being adequately met.
In this country, people are willing to burn themselves over very trivial questions, about whether you should have two governors or one governor. And you are willing to fast over some idiotic little question, the holy men are ready to attack people, and so on and on and on – a tribal approach to a tremendous problem. And I don’t think we are aware of this immense problem. This country has dissipated its energy in various trivial things, responding to the pressure of circumstances without having a large, wide outlook. It has approached nationalistically every problem, including the problem of starvation. There is no consideration of man as whole, only consideration of the limitation of a particular tribe, a particular narrow, religious, sectarian outlook.
There is a war, and people treat wars as a favourite war and not a favourite war, a war that is righteous, a war that is not politically right. You take sides when you have preached for forty years and more non-violence. No one apparently takes the whole problem entirely as a whole and deals with it as a total thing, not fragmentarily, not as a Sikh, not as a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, a communist, a socialist. And because we are not dealing with the problem as a whole, people are trying to escape in different ways. They are taking LSD, the drug that gives them tremendous experience. They are going off at tangent, responding to a minor, infantile, immature challenges and responding equally immaturely.