According to Osho, this country’s poverty springs from a centuries-old, anti-life, anti-body mindset that glorifies renunciation and worships poverty as spiritual. By praising the “other world,” people neglected this one—its beauty, work, cleanliness, and creation of wealth. The land is rich; the mind is poor. Transform the mind—love life and the body—and creative energies will build richness instead of perpetuating destitution.
People were taught that being poor is holy and this world doesn’t matter, so they stopped caring to make life better.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You said the other day that you desire that all people should be rich and have lotuses in their garden ponds. Why then do many people not own houses and gardens and lakes and lotuses? The question is: why is there so much poverty in this country?
And because of this nonsense type of thinking, Indian leaders and politicians go on consoling you. Some politician reduces his pay; he says, "I will take only half," and all the Indians are happy and say, "Look -- this is a mahatma.'Mahatma' Morarji Desai." Just because he has reduced his pay to half, do you think India's problem is solved? What problem is solved? And from the front door he reduces his wealth to half; from the back door his son Kanti Desai brings in millions of rupees. That's okay. Indians have become very much accustomed to living double lives. That's okay. Or Morarji Desai starts flying in Air India's aeroplanes, not using the special plane for the prime minister, and all, the whole country, is agog with joy. So your poverty is solved. In fact, he creates more trouble. It would have been better and less costly to use…
Osho, in a country like India, where inequality and poverty have deep roots, don’t your teachings help maintain the status quo? Religion in the past offered no effective challenge to feudal injustice. How are you dealing with the apparatus that sustains poverty, unemployment, and corruption?
On the other hand, in my ashram, talent is coming from the West—and you won’t let them come. Scientists, engineers, doctors, physicians, professors want to come and live here, but Morarji Desai doesn’t want to let them in. All Indian embassies abroad have been instructed: if anyone wishes to come to my ashram, do not grant entry. And you know Indian “efficiency”... such foolishness that they even write such things in official letters. A famous dentist wanted to come and live in India. He wrote to apply, and the Indian embassy in America replied: if you wish to go to Shri Rajneesh Ashram, Poona, permission cannot be granted. They wrote that outright. What to say of Indian efficiency! At least keep it hidden. If you wish to go to any other ashram, permission can be granted. But he doesn’t wish to go to any other ashram. I could gather the…
Beloved Osho, what are the causes of poverty in india, and the downfall of the economic condition? How can india come out of this mess and create richness?
Don't harm anybody, but don't let anybody harm you. Then only can a nonviolent person survive in the world, and not become a coward. Jesus says, "If somebody hits one of your cheeks, give him the other cheek too." Christians are hypocrites, they have never followed it. They have been killing, they have been murdering, they have been burning living people. They have been doing everything which goes against Jesus -- and still they go on preaching Jesus in the churches. And no Christian raises the question: "Our lifestyle for two thousand years is absolutely against the teachings of Jesus." The West has made an arrangement: a teaching is a teaching; it is good, pay respect to it. The Bible is holy -- but your religion is Sunday religion, only on a holiday. You go to the church and that's all. Six days do everything wrong that you can do;…
Osho, India has been a prosperous country!
No. Only a certain class in India was prosperous. India as a whole was never prosperous; only some strata were. From that affluent class came the religious people. From that affluent class the talk of religion also spread. India was never prosperous. As a society it was never prosperous. But yes, India was contented in its poverty. Therefore, rebellion against poverty never arose. Do not take this to mean that India was prosperous. India would still have been content in its poverty if the contact with the West had not come. The poor in India had no anxiety about it. But contact with the West created restlessness, and it planted in the poor the idea that being poor is the result of the social order. Poverty is not a necessity. But the affluent in India had convinced the poor that poverty is the fruit of your own sins, that being…
Why is india so poor?
The so-called saints are responsible. Down the ages, India has lived with a wrong philosophy -- a philosophy that teaches other-worldliness, a philosophy that teaches that the world is illusion and only the other world is true. You have not seen the other world, the true world; you have to believe. And the world that you have seen, and see every day and experience every day, is illusory, is maya. This foolish philosophy is the root cause of India's poverty. If the world is illusory then why care about science, why care about technology? What is the point? If the world is illusory, poverty is also an illusion, the beggar on the street is also an illusion, the starving person is also an illusion. The West has lived with the idea that only this world is real. Hence it has become rich, at least outwardly rich. The West has denied…