CHENNAI: Four western ideologies - theology, Darwinism, Marxism and Rousseau’s Social Contract - have impeded the country’s growth, said Governor RN Ravi here on Tuesday. After releasing the Tamil version of the books, ‘Dispersions of Thought’ and ‘Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya: Integral Humanism’ authored by Professor B Dharmalingam, at a function held at Raj Bhavan, the governor said theology believed in an anthropocentric view of life, where humans are at the centre of creation and the rest of creation were meant for their pleasure. This led to reckless exploitation of natural resources, conflict between humans and nature, and the climate crisis, he added.
“The ‘Bharatiya Darshan’, on the other hand, believed that we are all part of creation and are inextricably linked, be they humans, animals or non-living things. We are all children of the same Mother Earth,” he said. Touching on Darwinism, he said it insisting upon the survival of the fittest meant those who are weak got no right to exist and that only the strong prospered. “It is the law of the jungle where there is no compassion or sense of right or wrong. But the ‘Bharatiya Darshan’ believed in the survival of collectives with compassion,” Ravi added.
On Marxism, Governor Ravi said it raised perpetual conflicts between the haves and the have-nots. As per the theory, the ‘have-nots’ has to prevail and this idea spread like a virus. The model created divisions between and within segments. It triggered perpetual conflict in society, he said. Rousseau’s Social Contract, the governor said, looked upon the origin and relationship between an individual, a society, and a state as a “contract”. Like the fable of the six blind men and the elephant, everyone looked in parts at the theory, but nobody looked at it in toto, Ravi added.
Further, the governor stressed that the British rule led to “social, cultural and civilisational destruction” of Bharat. After independence, India was supposed to be rebuilt in a way the soul of the country demanded, but we lost track, he said. “We kept parroting the same colonial attitude, and our policies were heavily skewed towards western ideas and ideologies. This also resulted in regional imbalances; even in the most developed states, sub-regional imbalances are prominent, including in our state,” he added.
The governor lamented that educated persons approached the country’s problems from a Westerner’s perspective. “What Deendayal Upadhyaya said makes sense to the common illiterate or ordinary person but doesn’t get into the heads of the educated, especially those educated in English, in the country,” he said.