From Independence to Inter-dependence: Some thoughts (and belated wishes)

From Independence to Inter-Dependence

Today we celebrate the 63rd birthday of our dear motherland.

Today, we celebrate a day that witnessed a virtuous battle fought by some of our finest heroes to liberate our country from the yoke of foreign rule several decades ago.

We celebrate a day that gives us hope and continues to capture our imagination year after year.

Tis’ a day that makes us hark back to the things that were.

And a day that helps us dream of things that never were..but perhaps could be.

Most importantly, I think it is a day that helps us reflect… reflect on this country of ours….and this wonderful civilization that has survived the march of time….and survived invaders century after century and made them our very own.

A country that has survived a million and one differences, and taught the world that there can be true unity in diversity.

Its not all hunky dory though. And on this day, we must also take some time to reflect on our shortcomings, and on how far away we really are from being truly “independent”.

For independence is not just a political state of affairs. It is a feeling, an emotion, an attribute that touches the very core of our being. At its core, it suggests that we be “free’ in mind and spirit. Free of hatred…of jealousy…of corruption…of greed….of selfishness.. and all negative emotions which prevent us and the country that we represent from blossoming to its full potential.

But we really cannot be truly “independent” of such negative forces unless we understand that we are interconnected…that we are all “one” and that we are “inter-dependent ” on each other.
Our ancestors appear to have understood this wisdom.…and came up with a beautiful concept, “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”, which translates broadly to “the whole world is a family”.

Unfortunately, we lost that message somewhere along the way. It is painful to see that the building of a mosque in the US to further inter-religious harmony has paradoxically enough, spurred more hatred and intolerance. In India, we’re no worse; some may say that we are, in fact, far worse…and now represent an intolerant society…a society with deep fissures running through it… fissures that divide us along caste lines, along religious lines, along regional lines….fissures that foster hatred and violence.

Some of you may think that the concept of interdependence is at odds with independence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Inter-dependence really springs from the concept of independence…and is in fact, a more evolved version of it. It is a concept that suggests that we are all part of the same whole and that we are all one. Corny as it may sound, I think the three musketeers got it right when they sang: all for one, one for all!

When I was in law-school, I distinctly remember a friend of mine who was upset that he had to study subjects he didn’t really care about. Environmental law was one of them and it exasperated him so much that he once exclaimed: why should I bother about a bunch of penguins in the Antarctic? You see, he was more into the share market, SEBI and that sort of stuff. I sympathized with him then, and thought that our law school had no business burdening him with penguins and their problems… a species that didn’t really trade or know anything about stock markets.

But now, when I hark back to those days, I can’t help but see how wrong I really was. Those penguins matter to us, in the same way that our fellow human beings matter to us. For we’re all inter-related. We’re all part of the same consciousness… the same energy field that the Chinese call “chi” and our ancestors called prana. And that what we do individually impacts the lives of others.

I’m not sure how many of you have heard of the butterfly effect. It’s a fairly complex concept..but since my time is limited and I’ve been asked to keep this talk short, let me simplify it. A butterfly fluttering its wings in India could cause a hurricane in the US! There’s also a movie with the same title made on this theme: In short, everything in this cosmos is inter-related. Of course our limited minds cannot fathom all these connections…for causation is a complex phenomenon. But if we keep ourselves open to it, we will see more of it as the days go by.

The law of karma also draws in many ways from this inter-relatedness. It suggests that every action has a reaction…a reaction that may not be exactly equal and opposite to the action, as the wise Netwon suggested within the paradigm of a Western science that most of us are familiar with…but one that will manifest at some point in time….if not now, at some point in the future…or perhaps several lifetimes from now.

The law of karma dictates that we shall reap as we sow. Our law schools teach us many kinds of laws, and some of them incredibly stupid ones. Unfortunately, it never teaches us of the law of karma….at least not in a meaningful sense. And this law, dear friends, is perhaps the most important law of all.

Okay—so we’re all interrelated and interdependent. So what, you might ask? What does all this mean? It means that we have a duty to one another. Indeed, once you sense this inter-relatedness, you will automatically feel a certain kind of love and compassion for your fellow human beings…for the plants and animals around you…indeed for the entire universe. You will begin to appreciate that in helping others, you are really helping yourself. It is this love that caused one of our finest scientists, JC Bose to switch to studying plants and their emotions..leaving behind a potentially lucrative career in wireless research.

This brings me to a related point involving the inter-relatedness of academic fields and disciplines. Many of you must have already heard the magic term “inter-disciplinarity” in your first year at law school. A term that suggests that we cannot study the law as a stand-alone concept. Rather we are to appreciate it in relation to other disciplines from which it draws or should draw. In other words, criminal law is meaningless without some sense of psychology; constitutional law is meaningless without political science, and intellectual property is meaningless without some understanding of science and economics. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers benefited from this cross fertilization of ideas across disciplines.

JC Bose is a great example from India. And from the western world, we have someone whom many consider to be the most creative mind of all times: Da Vinci, a genius equally adept at constructing bridges…as he was at painting them….or sculpting …or expanding the frontiers of biology..or drawing up what many consider to be the first prototype of a helicopter.

Some of the most creative ideas that revolutionised our world and our thinking have come from those that did not create neat academic silos in their heads, but dipped into pearls of wisdom wherever they found them. Key innovations and ideas have come from those that appreciated the universal wisdom that everything was related and connected and that it was our duty to sniff out these connections. Einstein’s theory of relativity could also be said to draw in some ways from this theory of relatedness.

Dear friends: on this independence day, let us dwell on this inter-relatedness and interdependence. Let us appreciate that many of us are privileged and that it is our duty to help those who are less privileged than us. Indeed, law schools often speak of creating social engineers.. those that deploy the tool of the law to help improve society. But all this is in vain unless we first learn to love our neighbour…even to the extent of turning the other cheek, when slapped…a wisdom taught by some of the leading religions of the world today.

Unfortunately, law schools cannot really teach you some of this mystical, though useful wisdom. This has to acquired at an experiential level. At best, law schools can offer opportunities and platforms that enable such acquisition.

Let me end with a story of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation and one of the most well known spiritual experientalists. For no independence day speech can be complete without a reference to the Mahatma: The story goes that Gandhiji was once running to catch a moving train. As he managed to make it inside one of the compartments, he found to his chagrin that one of his sandals slipped away and fell on the platform. Had it been one of us, our immediate reaction would have been one of regret that we lost a sandal. Perhaps the foolhardy amongst us may have even attempted to retrieve the fallen sandal, even as the train was moving. Bapu however did the unthinkable. He threw away the one sandal that was still with him….hoping perhaps that someone on the platform could now use a complete set. This reflected a deep love and compassion that was intrinsically wired into this man…that for a moment, he didn’t care about this loss. He was more worried about how he could use that occasion to help his neighbour…. a neighbour who was part of the same whole as him…to whom he was inter-related…and on whom he was interdependent.

As we celebrate this independence day, may we embrace this philosophy of love, selflessness and interconnectedness that Bapu stood for. May we appreciate that independence is nothing more than a pre-cursor to this higher ideal of interconnectedness and inter-dependence. Jai Hind!