Taking charge of his life and becoming unstoppable
no matter what kind of background you come from
you do not worship Ambedkar
but you emulate his life
That no matter what society sets for you,
you are unstoppable.
Interviewer: India needs to be reminded who Ambedkar really was.
So the problem now is he is boxed into being this symbol of Dalits and that is all.
Sadhguru: See unfortunately (Laughs) all leaders are being appropriated by somebody.
If you say Sardar Patel, congress will say,
“He was a congressman, why are you talking about him?”
If you say Ambedkar, they say,
“He was a Dalit, why are you talking about him?” (Laughs)
All the people who worked for this nation,
they being inspiration for everybody in this country is important, somehow.
Interviewer: Especially Ambedkar because he is relevant so much more today.
Sadhguru: See I… to put it in his own words,
he talked about democracy not being just a form of a government,
but this is a way of human beings expressing
you know,
respect and reverence to each other. These are his words.
So he is talking about reverence to each other.
Reverence to each other
if somebody has to talk about it, in a way it is a spiritual process, alright?
So he is talking about social democracy,
not political democracy.
Political democracy we have,
on the paper, by law, we are all equal
but socially we are not.
No society manages to equate every human being,
that’ll never happen. That’s another matter.
But equal opportunity must happen.
Equality may not happen per se,
but equal opportunity must happen.
Unfortunately, that’s still yet to be achieved.
Though by law all of us have equal opportunity,
socially we still don’t have equal opportunity.
Variety of people are in many ways eliminated from this opportunity or -
not available for this opportunity to reach them.
For that to happen, it’s most important that...
See spiritual process means just this –
that your identity is not with your body.
Once your identity is not with your body,
it’s not about parentage any more.
It’s not about pedigree.
The privileges of pedigree must go.
Only then, there will be a social democracy.
But privileges of pedigree are still continuing.
“Who is your father,” is still of some consequence.
This must go.
Who my father is not my… not your issue.
That may be a personal issue for me, nothing to you.
Who I am, is all that matters to you.
This has to come in the society. It’s not happened yet.
We are in many ways
practicing feudalism through a democratic system.
Why whenever there is a election
there is so much talk about caste, creed, religion?
Who you pray to, what caste you belong to,
what does it matter?
But it matters because
we are practicing feudalism through democratic means.
Everybody knows if you get this caste what is the percentage,
if you get that religion, what is the percentage.
Ambedkar’s vision was a social democracy
not just political democracy.
Because political democracy…
any democracy for that matter,
is an endless debate and a confusion.
It is worthwhile only when we achieve social democracy.
Only political democracy is actually an impediment in many, many ways.
Well we don’t get there straightaway, we have to have political democracy first
and then reach out to social democracy, that’s what we are doing.
But after seventy years,
I would say we are going a bit slow.
So you are a man, you are a women, you are this, you are that,
what caste, what creed, doesn’t matter.
That’s what he is trying to bring about.
Unfortunately still Dalits have equal rights in by law,
but socially we have not achieved it.
Still the same level of discrimination is happening.
The poignant story that he talks about in his life, when he was nine years of age,
when he travelled from a village to
go to some place where his father was working near Pune or wherever,
this nine-year-old boy and his rest of his family travelling,
when they got off in the railway station,
they were not allowed to stay in the waiting room.
No bullock-cart was willing to take them to their destination.
And after much haggling, some bullock-cart-wala decided to take it
but he puts them on the bullock-cart and prefers to walk
because he does not want to sit on the bullock-cart along with these people
because at that time, it is believed that you will be polluted by their contact.
Unfortunately the same reality continues in rural India,
if not to the same extent,
but it continues. Still this idea,
another human being’s touch could pollute you
or even their shadow falling upon you could pollute you,
unfortunately continues to this day.
As a generation of people, we must put an end to this now
because the very idea of India as a republic will fail
if we do not fix this.
Interviewer: Sadhguru, this whole debate about reservation, this whole thing where they say
economic reservation is what is important now, not caste reservation anymore.
There is one whole school of thought which says, you know, they are misusing it
and it is not something. that’s relevant in India today.
Sadhguru: See, in a country like India,
whatever laws you make,
particularly concerned with having certain privileges,
misuse will be there.
We have to weigh between use and misuse.
A community for which for millennia,
not for short periods of time, for millennia has been discriminated against,
that it is strongly believed their very birth is of a lower nature,
if you don’t bring them up with some privileges so that they come level someday,
it would be very unfair.
Just because today, somebody is getting some reservation
and you think it is not fair because you didn’t get to get into a college or whatever,
I understand the angst that is there.
We need to understand that’s because we have too much population
for whatever infrastructure or education
or the facilities we try to create.
But reservation in many ways, as I have seen,
particularly in the south,
maybe it’s not been very well used in the north,
but in the south
a whole generation of people from those communities,
Dalit community,
have gotten well educated, gotten well-placed,
mainly because of reservation.
Now, resentment will come on various levels.
So this is a little adjustment with reservations may have to be done as time goes by.
See for example, you can give admission to somebody,
but you can’t pass him
because he belongs to a certain caste -
then you are bringing down the competence levels
in the country.
They must be given opportunity and they must be given extra coaching
to make up for whatever loss they have had, due to lack of proper schooling
but we should not compromise on competence.
And similarly for jobs if you… they must have reservations so that they can enter the job situation,
but promotions must come only with competence.
This adjustment needs to happen but as we said, in a democratic process,
there is always… after all an election has to be won.
Nobody dares ever to talk about any change,
whether positive or negative which concerns,
because anything that concerns a particular community
becomes a volatile election winning or losing
kind of thing.
I feel…
I strongly feel that reservations in this…
in the present level of development,
where the Dalits are in this country,
they still need it.
But if a distinction is made between urban Dalits and rural Dalits,
because the maximum discrimination and disadvantage happens in rural India,
they must be given far more advantage
than those who are already living in urban societies.
It can also be made like this,
first generation to get out of that social pit that unfortunately has been dug for them,
they must be given reservation,
second generation it must drop a little bit, third generation should be out of it.
But for rural Dalits, it is very, very essential.
There is no way out of that right now,
because the discrimination is so cruel.
So we should not underestimate this and think, “Oh, they are getting all unfair advantage,
you must take off the reservation,” no.
Such people should expose themselves to the rural situations in this country,
how discriminatory it is –
horribly discriminatory it is.
They cannot even enter your house
from the main door, they have to come from the back door.
That is not acceptable for any human being.
They can’t drink tea in a local teashop.
That is not acceptable, all right?
So this privilege of pedigree has to go,
and reservation is not a curse upon the country.
We can fix some timeline – two generations if they come out of it,
those who have come out of it should voluntarily go out of it.
Something like this must be created.
Dalits who have come out of it,
should share the reservation with those who have not come out of it.
I mean, this is from responsibility only.
See, these privileges we must understand
or because of a certain existing injustice,
we should not make the privileges themselves into another injustice.
So we need a more conscious society for that.
We should stop looking at people as this community, that community,
because all of us have only one vote.
Nobody has extra… two votes for one person.
So that means, by law we are equal.
Socially that has to manifest.
Interviewer: Sadhguru also you were talking about Ambedkar from a spiritual point of view
where he said all human beings are equal.
For the youth I was thinking that relevance of Ambedkar’s message…
Sadhguru: See, Ambedkar is a stellar example
of taking charge of one’s own life.
From the type of background that he came,
the intellectual brilliance that he displayed,
is an inspiration for any generation.
So social disadvantages did not put him down.
Whether he spoke about it much or not, is not the point.
That’s his life, taking charge of his life and becoming unstoppable no matter
what kind of background you come from.
But expecting every human being to do what he did is not fair.
You have to facilitate something for them.
It’s a utter shame,
personally I feel ashamed that even today,
though we are active in so many hundreds of villages,
we are still not able to change that.
I have made efforts and seen,
all you’ll create is conflict.
It’ll explode.
So, I feel, for the Dalit community – education, education, education.
Economic success must happen because of education
and they must move out of those communities,
that is when it will change, or it has to be only generational change.
In this generation, if it has to change,
they must get all highly educated and move out of those village communities
where no matter what, they’re put to a disadvantage.
It’s a very debilitating level of discrimination.
Interviewer: Ambedkar also said that, you know he was very against the politics of hero worship, Sadhguru.
And he said India is doing a big mistake by creating a hero out of a few people, and putting things at their feet.
Somehow we are guilty of doing the same thing even today.
We are very easily given to worshipping some one person as this guy can save all our problems.
Sadhguru: though this culture has been steeped in spirituality for thousands of years,
and always we have been told, our life is our karma, that means, our life is our making.
In spite of that, in the last few hundred years, we have become such a helpless lot.
I would say this is a consequence of being an occupied nation for nearly thousand years.
Unless you suck up to somebody up there, there’s no way you can survive.
I think that’s gone so deep into Indian psyche,
and when a good leader comes up, when a capable leader comes…
When a competent leader comes there, what he needs is many layers of leadership.
Instead of that, what he gets is worship.
What is he going to do with his worship?
Unfortunately, we have not created those many layers of leadership because
this is the psyche of an occupied nation, especially when it remains occupied for hundreds of years.
Where people slowly understand – if you put up your head, you’ll lose your head.
Best thing is to put down, mind your own business, and get away.
If you want something, suck up to somebody who is sitting up there.
This is gone very, very deep into us.
I think in many ways, Ambedkar fought against that,
that... do not create demi-gods out of leaders, political leaders.
Interviewer: But they did the same thing to him...
He is a demi-god for a lot of them too.
Sadhguru: So one thing you should do with Ambedkar is,
you do not worship Ambedkar
but you emulate his life, that’s what is needed.
Instead of emulation, he is getting what… worship.
No, you need to emulate his life.
That no matter what society sets for you,
you are unstoppable.
You have taken charge of your life. That’s what we need to demonstrate.