Subjugation

Question: OSHO, HOW CAN INDIA BE FREE WHEN HER WOMEN ARE NOT? So every Indian mind is full of bullshit... or you can call it 'holy cowdung'! That will look far more Indian and far more religious too! Holy cowdung is sacred and if your head is full of it you are bound to go to heaven because holy cowdung is the only thing in the world that defies gravity. It will take you up and up and up until you reach heaven! This male-chauvinistic country has lived in many kinds of slaveries, slaveries within slaveries. For twenty-two centuries India has been in slavery, political slavery. A country can live in slavery for twenty-two centuries only if somewhere deep down it is spiritually ready to accept slavery.

Question: BELOVED OSHO, AND WHAT IS IT BUT FRAGMENTS OF YOUR OWN SELF YOU WOULD DISCARD THAT YOU MAY BECOME FREE? IF IT IS AN UNJUST LAW YOU WOULD ABOLISH, THAT LAW WAS WRITTEN WITH YOUR OWN HAND UPON YOUR OWN FOREHEAD. YOU CANNOT ERASE IT BY BURNING YOUR LAW BOOKS NOR BY WASHING THE FOREHEADS OF YOUR JUDGES, THOUGH YOU POUR THE SEA UPON THEM. AND IF IT IS A DESPOT YOU WOULD DETHRONE, SEE FIRST THAT HIS THRONE ERECTED WITHIN YOU IS DESTROYED. FOR HOW CAN A TYRANT RULE THE FREE AND THE PROUD, BUT FOR A TYRANNY IN THEIR OWN FREEDOM AND A SHAME IN THEIR OWN PRIDE? AND IF IT IS A CARE YOU WOULD CAST OFF, THAT CARE HAS BEEN CHOSEN BY YOU RATHER THAN IMPOSED UPON YOU.

Osho, for centuries Indians have been enslaved and poor, and as a result suffer from a terrible sense of inferiority, blindly imitating the West. Isn’t this imitation unhealthy? And shouldn’t they find their own path and destination themselves? In this context, what guidance will you give us?

Mahatma Gandhi gave the poor a new name—Daridra Narayan, “God in the form of the poor.” If the poor are Narayan, how can poverty be eradicated? Will you eliminate Narayan? Narayan is to be worshiped. Install the poor in temples, worship them! Blessed is he who is poor! He called untouchables “Harijan,” people of God. We are clever with words. Once, “Harijan” meant those who had realized God; Gandhi applied it to bhangis and chamars. God is unknown—but we have His “people”! The word untouchable at least contained a sting, a pain. Harijan is syrup over poison—easy to swallow. Now being Harijan even feels good! Should poverty be eradicated, or worshiped? If they are Daridra Narayan—then build temples! Tagore said: My God is where the laborer breaks stone; my God is where the farmer, under the blazing sun, sows his field. Fine—then the more who break stones by the roadside,…

Osho, the other day, speaking of India, you said that this country’s fundamental problem is its superstitions and that it is about fifteen centuries behind the times. Would you kindly tell us how to distinguish between faith and superstition, and whether today’s faiths will not become tomorrow’s superstitions? Would you also graciously tell us what an individual or a community should do to be contemporary, to remain modern?

It is a fact of life worth understanding: neither the poor nor the rich revolt; the middle class does. All revolutions—of ideas, of economy, of society—arise from the middle. This land has much experience of trust—its taste, its peace. It knows that an event like Buddhahood can happen; it has that certainty. Therefore, even if there is no Buddha, “let a Buddha’s statue do”—it clings to something or other. Other countries don’t have so much superstition because they haven’t had so many occasions for trust. In America there isn’t much superstition because America has known no Buddha, no Mahavira, no Krishna. In that sense America is non-superstitious. And superstition cannot arise until trust has arisen. Where there is pleasure, there is the sense of pain; where there is wealth, the sense of poverty; where there is the taste of trust, the shadow of distrust is cast. Then fear of distrust…