| Awaken Bharata |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| THE IMPORTANCE OF KSHATRIYA DHARMA | |
| The
Decline of the Indian Kshatriya
However the problem of a deficient Kshatriya in India has a history long before Gandhi and is not something that he or any single group can be blamed for. Part of it can perhaps be blamed on the defeat of the Indian Kshatriya by foreign invaders, which caused them to lose credibility among their own people. Part of it could be blamed on a too other worldly attitude that caused Hindus not to care for their society or the outer world. We note a similar failure of the Hindu Vaishya, in which they fell from their traditional Dharma of charity and ceased to care for the poorer and weaker sections of society, leaving these groups vulnerable to religious conversion efforts. A tendency arose to think that Hindu society should follow the way of the Sadhu and be poor and defenseless, shunning wealth and power, and taking no initiative to improve the social order or challenge foreign rule.Yet classical India - that of Rama, Krishna, Buddha and Shankara - was neither poor nor defenseless, but an affluent society with a strong military and great skill in diplomacy. India's traditional spirituality did not arise through poverty or slavery but through a confident, mature and well balanced social order that allowed all human values - Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha - to flourish in freedom. A well balanced and vital society was the basis of yogic spirituality, which itself was a movement to higher vitality, creativity and awareness, not an escape, retreat, resignation or failure. This we can observe in the great development of arts, crafts, and science in classical India, which often led the world in these fields. |
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