One of my ongoing hobbies is the observation of how popular thought-patterns (belief systems) shape nations and history. Sometimes, we in the west can't see the forest for the trees: Those in love with the exotic "other" usually don't realize the impact a particular philosophy can have when given control of a culture for a couple hundred years.

Arundhati Roy

In 1998, Pakistan announced it had the bomb, followed shortly by India's announcement of the same. At the time, we tensely wondered if the subcontinent would plunge into the nuclear abyss. But for the moment, an uneasy stasis holds.

At one time, I'd been sort of a "fan" of Indian novelist and activist Arundhati Roy -- not that I agreed with her every word, but I admired her professed concern for the those dispossessed by dam-building projects in her native India. As I read more, though, I eventually noticed her comments were mere criticism, bereft of positive suggestions for improvement. They were, in practical terms, mere "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

On any topic, one might ask: What is the solution? In listening for a response, one realises Arundhati only gives us a long list of problems and pointed fingers. Practical solutions are not, apparently, her thing.

And that's probably a good thing, ultimately: Despite her literary brilliance, Roy is utterly cluess, in my (apparently) not-so humble opinion, about how certain things work.

Consider, for example, this passage about how peace is achieved, from "The End of Imagination", which she penned at the advent of the Indian bomb:

It is not some inherent, mystical attribute of nuclear bombs that they automatically inspire thoughts of peace. On the contrary, it is the endless, tireless, confrontational work of people who have had the courage to openly denounce them, the marches, the demonstrations, the films, the outrage - that is what has averted, or perhaps only postponed, nuclear war.

No, Arundhati, you have it so wrong. Do you really believe that it was the claques of hippies in the streets in the 1960s which stayed the grim Soviet finger on the button? (Or that of Curtis LeMay?)

"We must annihilate the capitalist oppressors!"

"No, Comrade, stop! Look! There is a filthy protestor holding a sign!"

Forces are at peace when they are in stasis: A massive dam does not burst because the people below have a consciousness that water must remain out of the valley, because it is cowed by feelings of "outrage" should such a tragedy occur. No, it is only the equal opposing force of the cement and steel in the dam which holds back the torrent.

In the nuclear age peace was maintained, not by a small group of bedraggled protestors holding signs saying "Make love/Not war!" on the Washington Mall, but by a very simple calculation: Anyone pressing that dreaded button would very likely have to pay the price with his own life, not to mention those of everyone he knew.

People who will wipe out an entire civilization are not concerned about, nor halted by, feelings of "outrage" among their intended victims.

Given Roy's simplistic (and insane) ideas of how and why peace occurs, we should not be suprised when she provides an equally simplistic analysis of underlying causes of conflict. In the case of India's bomb, can we just guess who's exclusively to blame?

But let us pause to give credit where it's due. Who must we thank for all this? The men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for altering the very meaning of life. From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living.

This makes sense, given the cultural prejudices expressed repeatedly in her works: India is an old, wise nation; the U.S. is a brash young upstart, not as seasoned in the wisdom of the ages as her own native soil, which she -- of course -- embodies and to which she gives voice.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Had Roy looked closer at the men who actually gave us the bomb, the "Masters of the Universe", her focus would have inevitably narrowed on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "Father of the Bomb" himself, the key player within the scientific community who spearheaded not just the research, but the social and political cheerleading for the effort among the scientific community.

Oppenheimer was an odd mix: During his years at Los Alamos, he was a prince among scientists, but strangely passive when it came to ethical questions concerning the bomb's eventual use and his own responsibility towards his creation. As a scientist, he would say at the time, he wasn't qualified to offer such advice. It was sufficient to do a thing because it could be done, without questioning whether it should be done, or worry about how it might be used. It wasn't his place to consider such ethical considerations. It was his job to produce the bomb, and ask no further questions.

I shudder to think what would have happened should such a man have worked for Hitler instead.

Yet later, he would become a fierce critic of the bomb, and American use thereof, at the same time admitting he had blood on his hands, but simulataneously justifying his own contributions and advocacy.

What, then, produced the mindset of this man? Some uniquely American ideal? Some notion of universal conquest? Of blind technology-worship? Of greed or power-lust over ethics? A life bereft of the "spirtuality of the ages?"

No.

According to James A. Hijiya [pdf], J. Robert Oppenheimer was, in fact, acting out of his understanding of the Hindu philosophy set forth in the Bhavaghad Gita.

When missionary William Carey arrived in India, he was shocked at some of the common practices he found there. People were resigned, passive about their lot in life, which was determined by the station into which they were born, their caste. Despite the pervasive poverty, starvation, and abuse around them there was no effort nor will to improve their society nor their own lot in life.

Their only obligation, their duty, their dharma was to serve in their appointend station, and not worry about the outcome -- one was to have an attitude of detachment from that. All was determined by "fate", a negative force against which it was pointless to struggle.

In particular, Carey saw how this worldview enabled inhumane practices such as sati, in which a widow is burned to death upon the funereal pyre of her husband and god. Note the unquestioning compliance of the victim in Carey's narration:

We saw a number of people assembled by the riverside. I asked for what they were met, and they told me, to burn the body of the dead man. I inquired if his wife would die with him; they answered, ‘yes’ and pointed to her.

She was standing by the pile of large billets of wood, on the top of which lay her husband’s dead body. Her nearest relative stood by her; and near her was a basket of sweetmeats. I asked if this was her choice, or if she were brought to it by any improper influence. They answered that it was perfectly voluntary. I talked till reasoning was of no use, and then began to exclaim with all my might against what they were doing, telling them it was shocking murder. They told me it was a great act of holiness, and added in a very surly manner, that if I did not like to see it, I might go further off and desired me to do so. I said that I would not go, that I was determined to stay and see the murder, against which I should certainly bear witness at the tribunal of God.

I exhorted the widow not to throw away her life; to fear nothing, for no evil would follow her refusal to be burned. But in the most calm manner she mounted the pile, and danced on it with her hands extended, as if in the utmost tranquillity of spirit. previous to this, the relative, whose office it was to set fire to the pile, led her five times round it - thrice at a time.

As she went round, she scattered the sweetmeats amongst the people, who ate them as a very holy thing. This being ended, she lay down beside the corpse, and put one arm under its neck, and the other over it, when a quantity of dry cocoa leaves and other substances were heaped over them to a considerable height, and then ghee was poured on the top. Two bamboos were then put over them, and held fast down, and fire put to the pile, which immediately blazed fiercely, owing to the dry and combustible materials of which it was composed.

No sooner was the fire kindled than all the people set up a great shout of joy; invoking Siva. It was impossible to have heard the woman, had she groaned, or even cried aloud, on account of the shoutings of the people, and again it was impossible for her to stir or struggle, by reason of the bamboos held down on her, like the levers of a press.

We made such objection to their use of these, insisting that it was undue force, to prevent her getting up when the fire burned. But they declared it was only to keep the fire from falling down. We could not bear to see more, and left them, exclaiming loudly against the murder, and filled with horror at what we had seen.

It was that horror which led Carey and his peers to begin a successful campaign against sati and other similar practices such as sacrificing adults and infants to gods -- a campaign waged not just on legal grounds, but against a worldview: a battle fought with ideas and education. Carey and his peers ultimately won; these practices were finally banned in India, prohibitions which remain to this day.

The Bhavaghad Gita begins with the story of a warrior, Prince Arjuna, who has qualms about killing people he loves. Lord Krishna, an avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu, appears to him and teaches him several lessons:

Though offered with many different nuances and ramifications, Krishna's arguments include three basic ones... (1) Arjuna is a soldier, so it is his duty [dharma] to fight; (2) Krishna, not Arjuna, will determine who lives and who dies, and Arjuna should neither mourn nor rejoice over what fate has in store but should be sublimely unattached to such results; (3) ultimately, the most important thing is devotion to Krishna faith will save Arjuna's soul....

After further instruction Arjuna fully realizes his error, ends his hesitation, and decides to join the battle.

J. Robert Oppenheimer would at first seem an unlikely "father of the bomb": The early 1920s saw him a member of group of pacifists, and studying at the renouned Cavendish laboratory, where his experiments were going nowhere. Following a period of depression, Oppenheimer began to study sanskrit in the late 1920s, and by 1933 he was reading the Bhavaghad Gita in the original, from which he absorbed key ideas which were to shape the rest of his life, and ours as well.

Writes Hijiya:

From [the Gita] Oppenheimer derived a new ethic consisting of the single-minded performance of personal duty, replacing the humanitarianism of Ethical Culture. He elevated this new ethic to a new place above any other guide to behavior. Execution of duty, he came to believe, would be completely decisive in achieving his salvation, that is, a righteous and therefore happy life, free of the woe that had previously beset him.

And:

For an uncertain soldier like Oppenheimer, nervously fashioning his own atomic arrow, Arjuna sets a good example. Arjuna is fighting to install his eldest brother, Yudhishthira, as ruler of the kingdom and emperor of the known world... Krishna's message to Arjuna is clear: you must fight. To Oppenheimer the message would have seemed equally clear. If it was proper for Arjuna to kill his own friends and relatives in a squabble over the inheritance of a kingdom, then how could it be wrong for Oppenheimer to build a weapon to kill Germans and Japanese whose governments were trying to conquer the world?

The ideas of the Gita clash with traditional western values of individualism, the individual's duty before God and conscience, as judged by a fixed, absolute set of ideals. In contrast, it is morally relativistic, and places the collective above the individual:

However, as Klaus Klostermaier points out, dharma is group-centered and group-oriented. The individual conscience has a role, but it is circumscribed within the consensus formed by good and learned people through the ages...

Another way in which the Gita seems conservative to modern Americans like Thoreau is in its refusal to assign the same dharma to every human being. Instead, everyone in the hierarchically ordered Hindu society has a particular role that is determined by one's class, family, age, and training. Ancient Indian thought legitimized divergency of duty, says W. Norman Brown, on what might seem to others to be a scale of astounding amplitude. Dominic Goodall says that Krishna teaches Arjuna that sanctioned behaviour is not defined by absolute moral laws nor general principles modified to suit differing situations, but that it is particular to each person, their status and their position...

For better botch your job than gain
  Perfection in your neighbor's;
Die if you must, but do not run
  The risk of alien labors.

In anecdote after anecdote, Hijiya connects Oppenheim's behavior and words after this point with the philosophy he absorbed from the Gita, which enables him to do a duty which he should, by all lights, find morally objectionable -- given his previous memberships in pacifist groups and later protestations against the deployment of nuclear weapons.

So it comes as no suprise that when the "father of the bomb" sees his own child in full bloom over the Nevada desert, a passage from the Gita flashes through his mind:

I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.

What culture produced a mindset which could convince a known pacifist to labor long and hard to produce a weapon of such immense destructive power, but ask so few initial questions about whether and how it should be used?

You see, Arundhati, the culture in question was your own.