WHAT DRIVES THE ECONOMY AND WHY THE WEST IS FALTERING

 

In Truth and Transformation, Vishal Mangalwadi, an Indian economist, identified the central element for prosperity—morality. He explained why his India had long failed while the West had leaped forward. It was because of the West’s moral engine:

·       Swami Sivananda of the Divine Life Society summarized classic Hinduism in this way: “The world is neither good nor bad. The mind creates good and evil. Thinking makes it so. The evil is not in the world; it is in the mind.…If you become perfect [God] the world will appear good [perfect].”

Mangalwadi marveled at the irony:

·       For me the ironic fact is that while my culture teaches that each one of us is God, the Netherlands and England were built on the biblical idea that human beings are sinners and accountable to God. India’s religious philosophy taught that since the human soul was divine, it could not sin. In fact, our most rigorous religious philosophy teaches that everything is God. God is the only reality that exists, and therefore there is no ultimate distinction between good and evil, right and wrong.

Ironically, to regard oneself as a sinner in need of God’s grace and His moral standards became the antidote to corruption and the way forward. Consequently, none were above criticism. Instead, critical thought is necessary for growth and advancement.

Without God’s objective moral standards, moral relativism reigned in Mangalwadi’s India with disastrous effects:

·       You don’t grow fruits or vegetables, or keep chickens or rabbits, because they will be stolen. A mango from India sells for as much as three dollars in America. Growing mangoes or guavas alone could lift whole families out of poverty. But if hardworking peasants grew good mangoes and guavas, the higher castes would come and take them. If the peasants tried to protect their fruit, they would be beaten and their wives raped.

According to Mangalwadi, morality is merely constructed by those in power for their own pleasure. Consequently, “Morality is merely a function of cultural power.” Mangalwadi blames this on Hinduism:

·       They do so because our pantheism dismisses morality and our polytheism worships corrupt gods.

However, Mangalwadi claims that the West has succumbed to the same religion:

·       The West is becoming corrupt like us because it is developing a “new spirituality” without morality. This new spirituality is no different than our old spirituality.

Why had the West progressed? According to Mangalwadi, the West had been granted the beliefs necessary to progress:

·       Given our early start, India and China should have been eons ahead of the West in developing technology and economy. Why did we fall behind? The answer is that our cultures were shaped by worldviews that taught us that intellect was our problem and salvation depended on deliverance from intellect, not from sin.

Mangalwadi had once been initiated into Transcendental Meditation. When he asked what his mantra meant, he was told something quite revealing:

·       “The principle of Transcendental Meditation is not to know truth but to empty one’s mind of all rational thought—to “transcend” thinking. To think is to remain in ignorance, in bondage to rational thought. Meditation, he explained, is a means of escaping thinking by focusing attention on a sacred though meaningless sound like Om.”

It became apparent that this was the reason for the great suffering India had endured. According to Mangalwadi, England had been rescued by the mercy of God through the Bible:

·       Early eighteenth-century England was as corrupt as my country; it was transformed by a religious revival led by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church. For that story, see chapter 7 of my book Missionary Conspiracy: Letters to a Postmodern Hindu (New Delhi, India: Nivedit Good Books, 1996).

However, as the West has rejected its Christian roots, it has also rejected the prosperity that had once made it the envy of the world.