[10] : Volatile identities and Kshatriya (Rajput) beingness

Toto ( the European man) was deserted by his companions on a remote Japanese island. The sick Toto was rescued by the Japanese natives. In a few years, Toto picked up the Japanese language, the Japanese culture, and the way of life. He became a white japanese and died in a battle defending the Island against the outsiders – his European compatriots. 

Of Course it’s a fictional story.

But, look at the psychological transformation of the man. 

A white man lives among the foreigners for a long period of time and appropriates their manners, culture, religion, and way of life. All that was once foreign to him, he appropriated and internalized with ease through naturalization and enculturation. His mode of being switched from being a European to a Japanese. Not that his original European sense of being got effaced totally. It simply became sterile or comatosed. It was cast away to the psychological trash bin, so to speak. And this new mode of being as a Japanese brought a new sense of loyalty, devotion, love, responsibility and ownership. So much so that he died fighting against his own blood brothers out of compulsion to act from his newly acquired mode of being. 

We often talk about the lack of ownership and initiative among the Kshatriyas but we never seem to discuss the cause of the manifest phenomenon. Why is it so? The answer is, in the past 70 years, the Hindu mode of being has been very powerful within Kshatriyas. And such being the case, the Kshatriyas have internalized all the weakness, meekness, and carelessness that naturally accompanies the Hindu mode of life. The Hindu is incapable of taking ownership of anything in the world. Not even his own life and death. He is a perpetual victim. He can only play a victim. He has mastered the art of playing a victim. But, he doesn’t do anything on account of being wronged. He wants his oppressor to cut him some slack. He wants him to make his sufferings a little more bearable. And that’s all that he is capable of. He is highly irresponsible; someone who cannot take ownership of anything; someone who runs away from conflict and so on…

It stands to reason thus, that if we need to make Kshatriyas take responsibility and ownership that cannot happen until we change his mode of beingness. Because responsibility is predicated on the sense of ownership which in turn is decided by the basic mode of beingness of a community. So, we need to change the mode of beingness. Bring the Kshatriya beingness in the foreground and the Hindu beingness in the background. We have already seen direct evidence to this effect in some regions. The same needs to be replicated in other places as well.