The world’s last Hindu king is dead,” the seeker told the Hermit, reading the signs of The Times.
“Long Live Hinduism! Ameen!” said the Hermit.
“How silly, can it get, you must be joking,” the seeker shot back.
“I am dead serious,” said the Hermit.
Look at the world around you, every major faith that makes for a people still identifies with a king, if not several kings. Or if I were to put it the other way around, many a king still identifies with a major faith or the other. The Christians have theirs, the Muslims theirs too, and, of course, the Buddhists. The king of Thailand, a Buddhist, is the world’s longest reigning monarch; the Sultan of Brunei, a Muslim, is the world’s richest king; the queen of England, a Christian, and the emperor of Japan, a Shinto lay claim to the world’s longest-running kingships.
Even Communists boast their longest reigning monarch in Castro of Cuba.
“So what?” shot the seeker. “Until now, most of us, Indians, boasted the world’s only Hindu king in Nepal.”
“And now that that king is gone, peace will prevail,” said the Hermit.
There lies the expanse of Hinduism. It is much, much more than its icons — a people, a state, a government, a king that make a faith. Hinduism is all this... and more in the absence of all this and more. It’s beyond the touch and feel of icons. It’s the way we are, no matter what we are, no matter where we are. Nepal, India, wherever!
“You have deliberately left out the Jews,” pointed out the seeker.
“I have,” agreed the Hermit. “That’s because Judaism, unlike Hinduism, is still evolving as a religion. Alas, I must also admit that I do not know much about Judaism beyond the obvious...”
“What’s obvious?” asked the seeker.
It is obvious that Jews, like the Hindus, are meant to be stateless people. This is why the world’s most enduring Jewish icon Albert Einstein was a stateless person. After years in the wilderness, once the Jews started defining themselves within geographical boundaries and, therefore, a kingdom minus a king, they triggered unprecedented terror born out of confrontation. And that confrontation threatens their annihilation to this day.
“Now, should you think I’m spinning a yarn,” said the Hermit, “the death of the world’s only Hindu kingdom is a pointer to the eventual death of the Jewish state. It is also a pointer to the eventual annihilation of all other nation-states rooted in religion.”
Take a lesson:
A state, much like the king, is the identity a people give unto themselves to deliver their ego that they are unable to deliver unto themselves. So, in their humility, the subjects identify themselves with the king in the hope that he will deliver unto them what they so deeply desire. And the king delivers unto his subjects the civic virtues of self-respect and dignity. In doing this, the king returns to his subject's ego. And the king uses various weapons that he is best capable of using to deliver self-respect and dignity to his people either by way of military dominance or economic uplift or social justice. For the king to restore unto his subjects what they desire the most, he must reach out to the masses, that is, to the maximum number of people that make the community that makes the king. The king does this, in humility, sharing his love, his benevolence, his might, his power and his economic clout with his subjects as these are the very virtues the subjects once vested in their king. In doing this, the king also shifts the focus of attention away from him and centres it on his subjects. But when the king wants himself to be the centre of attention and vests the identity of his subjects entirely in himself, he clings to the civic virtues of self-esteem and dignity, retaining the military might and economic clout with himself. In doing this, he shifts the focus of attention of the people from themselves to himself. In doing this, the king draws the forces of the people who demand a share of what is originally theirs but is now the exclusive preserve of the king. When this happens, the king gets defensive and transfers all the energies and resources of the state to protect his virtues for himself. He does so till that point in time when the people’s power overwhelms the might of the king. In the process, the subjects decimate the identity they once vested in the king and restore their ego unto themselves. When that happens, the king is dead.
The king is dead. Rest in Peace!
Back to Essays