The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 257. India, Europe & Biblical Revolution ｜ Vishal Mangalwadi

00:00:01.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.000 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.000 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:19.000 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.000 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.000 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.000 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.000 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:57.000 Hello everyone. I am pleased to have with me today Dr. Vishal Mangalvati.

00:01:18.000 Born in 1949, Dr. Mangalvati is founder-president of the Book of the Millennium International slash Revelation movement.

00:01:28.000 He's an Indian philosopher and social reformer, born and raised in India.

00:01:33.000 Vishal studied philosophy at the University of Allelabad, 1967 to 1969, and Indore, 1971 to 73,

00:01:41.000 in Hindu ashrams and at the Labrie Fellowship in Switzerland in 1976.

00:01:47.000 Along with his wife, Ruth, he founded a community to serve the rural poor in India.

00:01:53.000 Vishal continued his direct involvement in community transformation until 1997,

00:01:59.000 including service at the headquarters of two national political parties.

00:02:03.000 There, he worked toward the empowerment and liberation of Indian peasants and the lower castes.

00:02:09.000 In 1977, Asia's then-largest publisher, Vikas Publishing House, published his first book, The World of Gurus.

00:02:18.000 His next two books, When the New Age Gets Old, IVP, 1992, and India, The Grand Experiment, HIPAA-RAN, 1997,

00:02:27.000 brought his work to the attention of American and European readers.

00:02:31.000 At the turn of the millennium, Vishal and his wife, Ruth, were invited to the U.S. to make a television series

00:02:37.000 exploring the Bible's role in creating the modern world.

00:02:41.000 Their research, prepared in the process of making a documentary film,

00:02:48.000 has been presented in text form and on a variety of electronic and social media platforms.

00:02:53.000 He's lectured in more than 40 countries and published 17 books,

00:02:57.000 served as the Honorary Professor of Applied Theology in the Gospel and Plough Faculty of Theology,

00:03:03.000 the Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture Technology and Sciences in Al-Halabad, India, since 2013.

00:03:11.000 I recently read two of his newer books, The Book That Made Your World and Thomas Nelson, 2011.

00:03:23.000 And in what is some ways a companion volume and an extension, this book changed everything.

00:03:27.000 Sought-after Press Media, 2019.

00:03:31.000 And it was very interesting to me to encounter the views of a non-westerner on the biblical corpus and its effects on,

00:03:39.000 well, its broad effects on civilization.

00:03:42.000 I was also extremely impressed and happy to have had the opportunity to read books that were so deeply researched and widely ranging.

00:03:54.000 I learned all sorts of things about Western history and certainly a lot about Indian history.

00:03:58.000 Things I had no idea about. 0.95

00:04:00.000 So ignorant when it comes to history that it's embarrassing.

00:04:03.000 So it was a pleasure to encounter these books and to get some sense of the depth and breadth of scholarship that went into their production. 0.79

00:04:10.000 I thought we could have a pretty interesting conversation on the, well, on the history of India,

00:04:16.000 on the role the Bible played in shaping India as a modern country, on your views of the Bible and the West, all of that.

00:04:22.000 So welcome to my discussion.

00:04:25.000 Thank you, sir. I'm honored.

00:04:29.000 Well, it's a pleasure to have you here.

00:04:31.000 So can you maybe start by telling everyone how you came across the Bible and why you've made it in some ways, I would say, the centerpiece of your life.

00:04:39.000 It's study.

00:04:41.000 Yes.

00:04:42.000 While I was studying philosophy in Allahabad University, I couldn't have any childish faith because my professors did not believe the Bible or Hindu scriptures.

00:05:00.000 My, I had become a Christian as a teenager because I was going through a moral struggle.

00:05:08.000 I was addicted to shoplifting and lying.

00:05:12.000 And I hated myself for this habit of lying when there was nothing to be gained from lying.

00:05:19.000 And I would meditate and try and control my tongue.

00:05:23.000 But in the evening, when I look back on the day, I have just deceived everybody that was habit.

00:05:30.000 And I will try and have more willpower to control myself until someone explained to me that your problem is not will, lack of willpower.

00:05:42.000 You're quite stubborn. 0.99

00:05:44.000 You have a disease. 1.00

00:05:46.000 You have a disease. 0.73

00:05:47.000 It's called sin that rules you.

00:05:50.000 But there is a good news that there is a savior who can save you from sin.

00:05:55.000 So I asked Jesus to deliver me from my habit of lying.

00:06:00.000 But he also went ahead and delivered me from my habit of stealing.

00:06:04.000 I was able to go back to the shops from where I had stolen and offer restitution.

00:06:09.000 Thankfully, nobody took the money.

00:06:11.000 They were all pleased.

00:06:12.000 These are little things that I had.

00:06:14.000 How old were you?

00:06:15.000 How old were you?

00:06:16.000 This is when I was about 14 or so.

00:06:19.000 I was still a teenager struggling with this moral struggle.

00:06:23.000 Why do you think why do you think it was that turning to Christianity actually worked when when your own attempts hadn't hadn't produced any positive results?

00:06:34.000 Well, that is actually a very good question, because I had already realized that my attempt to control my tongue.

00:06:45.000 I hadn't heard the word addiction.

00:06:47.000 I didn't know what addiction was, what it meant.

00:06:51.000 So I just thought that I had these terrible habits and I knew they were wrong.

00:06:57.000 I didn't know how to get out of them.

00:06:59.000 And so when I was told that there is a savior who came to save sinners like me as a child, I believed and I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and to change.

00:07:11.000 So the transformation was real.

00:07:14.000 I got very excited.

00:07:15.000 You know, it's not easy to go back to the shops and confess that you had stolen.

00:07:20.000 So the transformation was real.

00:07:22.000 But at the university, I found that I couldn't really believe the Bible to be true.

00:07:28.000 Nobody was directly attacking the Bible in the university, but my professors were obviously a lot more learned than my pastors.

00:07:37.000 And if the professors didn't believe the Bible, why should I follow the pastors?

00:07:42.000 So it was easy to doubt the Bible.

00:07:45.000 The difficult question was, what then do you believe?

00:07:49.000 And I decided that I'm going to believe what the best philosophers and scientists believe.

00:07:54.000 So what do they think is the truth?

00:07:57.000 I began reviewing my course, reviewing all the notes, all the books.

00:08:04.000 And I began to realize that my professors knew that the philosophers knew that they didn't know the truth and that they could not know the truth.

00:08:16.000 By 1969, philosophy departments in India already knew that the enlightenment failed.

00:08:26.000 Nobody in any university believed that I know the truth and I can teach the truth.

00:08:32.000 So I began to feel that perhaps the Buddha was right.

00:08:37.000 I come from the same people group as the Buddha and his parable of the five blind men trying to make sense of an elephant and fighting that elephant is like a pillar or like a wall or like a rope.

00:08:50.000 We all have some truth, but that is relative truth relative to our experience of the elephant.

00:08:59.000 None of us really know the truth.

00:09:02.000 None of us really know the elephant.

00:09:04.000 So I thought that perhaps the Buddha was right.

00:09:07.000 And we should be humble enough in knowing that none of us know the truth and we should listen to each other rather than fighting with each other.

00:09:15.000 But that raised the question that if the five blind men are there who do not know the elephant, could there be a sixth person who is not blind, who sees the elephant and who can communicate to me what I'm experiencing of the elephant?

00:09:35.000 So obviously the concept of blindness exists because there is someone who is not blind.

00:09:43.000 So the sight must exist for the concept of blindness to exist.

00:09:48.000 So I decided, is there someone who knows the truth?

00:09:52.000 Has he spoken?

00:09:53.000 So this started on my quest, the philosophical quest to see.

00:09:59.000 I first went to the Hindu said that sells him what scriptures, and asked them for a copy of the right, thus the most ancient sacred Hindu scriptures, which are supposed to be revelation.

00:10:14.000 revelation and I was amazed that the my professors of course had been taught teaching us the

00:10:21.900 philosophy of the Vedas but they never brought a copy of the Vedas into the classroom and I had

00:10:29.120 never seen a copy of the Vedas so I went to buy one and I was told that sorry the Vedas are not

00:10:36.500 printed they cannot be translated I was surprised to learn that actually Sanskrit never had a script

00:10:43.060 because it was oral language so it's sophisticated a grammar but no script so the Vedas were not

00:10:52.440 supposed to be written down they were to be memorized but and memorizing was not enough you

00:10:59.380 needed correct enunciation and pronunciation and intonation and when to offer the melted butter

00:11:07.500 into the fire etc the rituals that was the purpose so Vedas were never written to know the truth

00:11:14.120 and in fact the Upanishad which followed the Vedas Mundaka Upanishad for example which from which our

00:11:24.660 national motto comes which is Satya Mev Jayate truth alone triumphs the Upanishad says

00:11:31.880 that no amount of study of the Vedas will ever lead you to truth because the Vedas are not written to

00:11:39.640 give you knowledge or wisdom of truth they are magical sounds composed to give you power so I said well

00:11:48.660 it'll be very nice to have some power but right now I'm looking for truth so I went to the Muslim 1.00

00:11:56.260 books because I was in a city called Allahabad which is a Persian name abode of Allah this city was

00:12:03.780 established by Muslims just two years ago its name was changed to a Hindu name but at that time it was

00:12:10.720 still seen as a Muslim city and I was surprised that the Quran was not available neither in my mother tongue which

00:12:18.760 is India's national language Hindi or Urdu which was the language of my town which is the national

00:12:26.520 language of Pakistan right now so the Quran was not available the shopkeepers explained to me that you

00:12:35.700 have to study Arab to study Quran so I said well it'll be very nice to know a foreign language but at this

00:12:46.500 moment I'm not interested in studying a language if the Quran is God's word why is it not available

00:12:52.440 to me in my language so it was my older sister who encouraged me to read the Bible and I said to

00:12:58.820 her that I've already read the Bible I think these are childish stories this is it she said no no you were

00:13:05.420 a child when you read it now you think you are a philosopher so read it as a critical philosopher

00:13:11.840 and as I began rereading the Bible I found Genesis very exciting because it was answering questions

00:13:19.620 that university had not answered about who who am I what is man yeah well in your in your book one of

00:13:26.640 the things you do quite nicely a couple of comments and what you've said I mean you make a quite a

00:13:33.600 remarkable and insightful case I would say for the particulars of the vision of man that's embedded in

00:13:41.160 Genesis and I found that interesting it your ideas in some sense paralleled ideas I was developing in

00:13:46.800 a course or a lecture series I did in the Bible that God contends with chaos to make order and that

00:13:53.220 man and women are made man and woman are made in the in that image and there's a imputed nobility to

00:14:02.660 the human character that's part and parcel of the initial Genesis story you also make a case that

00:14:07.920 and you were beginning to develop that just now again that um the universal translation of the

00:14:14.660 Bible has had a revolutionary worldwide effect on every culture really that it's touched and that

00:14:19.740 that effect of the book itself not necessarily the people who transmitted the book but sometimes them

00:14:24.720 too that that effect was fundamentally positive that it led to uh an increased appreciation for the

00:14:31.420 dignity and worth and nobility of of men and women alike regardless of their economic status or

00:14:37.780 background that's absolutely right and we are in the same wavelength at that point uh but uh later as I

00:14:46.560 kept reading up to say books like Leviticus I found the Bible very poor very boring book but when I came into

00:14:54.500 the uh historical books of Kings and Chronicles then I was really fed up here I am an Indian young man

00:15:03.540 I do not know enough about Indian history why am I reading this Jewish book um and as I was ready to close

00:15:12.480 down the Bible once and for all the uh something amazing happened which was that uh Indian history

00:15:23.000 at school level is always telling us how good great glorious wonderful our ancestors and our rulers was

00:15:31.860 this Jewish book this Jewish book in Kings and Chronicles was telling me how rotten the Jewish kings were 1.00

00:15:37.700 so I realized of course this is not court history kings didn't pay historians to write about their

00:15:44.560 fathers so this must be religious history of the Jews which is critical of the politicians because in India

00:15:51.540 the religious leaders are Brahmins politicians are Chhatriyas there's always rivalry between them 1.00

00:15:58.520 so I said this must be a religious book so just to confirm my opinion of what the Bible is I began

00:16:06.120 rereading these historical books and I was amazed that the book is condemning Jewish religious leaders

00:16:14.220 to the point that God hated them he destroyed his temple he killed the priests he sent them into slavery

00:16:22.260 so I said okay then the Bible must be subaltern history written from the point of view of simple 0.57

00:16:30.180 uh Jewish people men and women and children who uh are exploited both by religious and political leaders

00:16:39.860 but then uh as I began rereading these books I realized no uh this book is incredible

00:16:52.720 it is more anti-semitic than anything Hitler could have written it is saying that every Jew 0.75

00:16:59.640 was an idolater adulterer liar cheater deceiver etc god hated the people he destroyed his chosen people 0.96

00:17:08.860 send them into slavery to Syria and Babylon so then I said well this must be the point of view of the 1.00

00:17:16.220 prophets because prophets love to condemn everybody uh that's people would accuse you and me of being

00:17:23.980 that kind of uh voice so here I already know that these are very boring books and within a period of two

00:17:32.300 I'm looking through Samuel Kings and Chronicles for the fifth time to just confirm my point of view

00:17:39.180 that this is the word of prophets uh but then I was amazed that the book is saying most of the prophets

00:17:47.160 were false prophets the good ones were the losers they were trying to save their nation they couldn't

00:17:54.100 save themselves they were beaten killed thrown into cisterns etc right so you're making the case that it's not

00:18:01.960 easy to read those books as the expression of any given dominant group or power or or exploitative group

00:18:09.780 or even viewpoint other than other than what other than an attempt to lay out some some fundamental

00:18:15.700 ethical truth well it was a widow in um the north of Israel uh Sidonian widow who opened my eyes

00:18:26.720 Elijah Elijah is running away from his own king the king says you are a troubler of Israel because of you 0.84

00:18:35.400 there is three years of famine he was hiding in a brook uh drinking water from there the Bible says the

00:18:42.620 crows were bringing his food the the brook dried out so he was sent to this widow of Zarephath and uh Elijah

00:18:53.680 says please can you bring me some water and she goes you know he's been on a long journey he shouts at her

00:19:00.480 please also bring me a loaf of bread she says now that's going too far I have just a little bit of

00:19:06.240 flour I'm going to make the last meal me and my son we eat that after that we die he says no no you won't

00:19:15.360 die make a loaf of me besides yourself and your son she does so she invites him to stay because she 0.98

00:19:25.220 realizes that she actually had more flour than she thought next morning she still has flour and oil

00:19:31.820 and next evening and the third day and the fourth day and she begins to feel this guy is a magician

00:19:36.880 he's multiplying by a limited flock and she's very pleased to have him as the house guest but then

00:19:45.400 her son becomes sick and dies and she's really angry at Elijah that I'm a sinner did you as a man of God

00:19:53.640 come here to judge me I have nothing I have no husband I have no jewelry I have no pots and pans

00:20:00.560 I have no savings no insurance this boy was my only hope and now he is dead uh because of you so Elijah

00:20:09.060 takes her him the boy up prays for him the and ask God that my whole nation condemns me as a troubler

00:20:17.300 of Israel now you have brought trouble upon this woman also so the boy is resurrected the woman when he

00:20:26.140 brings the son back the woman says now I know that you are a man of God and the words of the Lord

00:20:33.980 from your mouth are true now my professors have no concept of truth can the words communicate truth

00:20:42.040 the Buddha doesn't believe openers don't believe that human words can communicate truth but a widow

00:20:48.500 knows that you're a man of God the word of the Lord from your mouth is truth so I began to

00:20:55.680 look into these old uh historical books and I realized that whatever my interpretation

00:21:02.220 the book itself is claiming to be God's word yeah well one of the things that you do a nice job of I

00:21:08.580 would say in contrast to maybe maybe post-modern perspectives in particular is to make the case that

00:21:16.720 the biblical narrative um is predicated on the idea that there is a truth that words can aspire to

00:21:25.540 and words can contain that truth and that human beings can possess those words so the words can

00:21:32.100 refer to something that's real and absolute and fundamentally true and we're graced in some sense

00:21:37.860 by the ability to partake in that process and that words have a world engendering force as well

00:21:43.940 and so I thought that defense of of the biblical perspective was extremely is extremely what would you

00:21:51.820 say necessary and welcome in today's world because as you point out it isn't the conclusion of modern

00:22:00.420 philosophers especially of the more radical type that words refer to anything at all outside of

00:22:05.280 themselves or that words can contain anything reasonably approximating some kind of transcendent truth

00:22:12.800 yes that's what I learned studying Wittgenstein uh Burton Russell said that Wittgenstein was the

00:22:19.600 greatest British philosopher of the first part of the 20th century and his philosophy of linguistic

00:22:25.800 analysis he begins with assuming that the words have something to do with truth some words can

00:22:31.940 communicate truth but by the time he's done he has come to realize uh that words uh have nothing to do

00:22:40.320 with truth the words lead to words and more words and more words so after that the western

00:22:46.600 enlightenment philosophy becomes anti-philosophy it's not a pursuit of truth uh but it's a pursuit of um

00:22:54.740 myth-making uh story uh making uh but so so you have existentialism etc taking off from from um failure of the

00:23:10.040 enlightenment because that raises the question where does language come from so if you take an atheistic

00:23:17.980 position that we were all primates in the jungles of Sudan and Ethiopia and uh we we were fighting

00:23:26.460 uh with each other over mating and food then the language evolved uh because uh this is my parable that um

00:23:36.400 a uh an ape a female ape has her child they're all the whole gang is resting on the trees so in the 0.97

00:23:45.620 morning she gets up and there is one male uh he gets up he's leaving so she asks him where are you going

00:23:52.240 because they don't use words and he says that well yesterday I saw some very pretty females going towards 1.00

00:23:58.540 Ethiopia that's where I'm going she said you're not going anywhere you stay here look after my baby

00:24:04.660 I'm hungry my baby is hungry I'm going to eat find some food for myself and there are pythons here 0.95

00:24:11.820 they'll eat up my baby unless you sit and watch over my baby uh if you don't I'll break your head

00:24:18.840 so uh in these fights of uh apes or primates fighting over food mating rights uh the language sounds

00:24:30.000 animal sounds become uh words language language develops if that's the origin of language then

00:24:38.180 the postmodern philosophy is right that words can have nothing to do with truth this is where

00:24:43.960 Upanishads and Buddhism had reached that in order to know the truth you have to empty your mind

00:24:49.900 in meditation you have to know they didn't go the way Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell went because

00:24:58.160 uh Buddha is already critiquing like Socrates he's already critiquing the myths that the religious myths

00:25:06.400 that Hindus have created or the Greeks have created these myths are meant not to find meaning of life and 0.88

00:25:14.180 truth these myths are meant by religious leaders to exploit the ordinary people so uh so the Buddha has

00:25:23.660 and Socrates has very little use for the myths uh unlike Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell uh because they

00:25:31.640 already know that people are enslaved by myths so a lot of the New Testament is critical of stories

00:25:38.960 critical of myths although at the moment the Western mind has been taken over by the idea that we cannot

00:25:47.060 know the truth but we can invent stories that know the truth so I I began to realize that uh if there are

00:25:56.420 five blind men there could be a sixth man who is not blind can he speak is revelation possible and as I'm

00:26:06.440 reading the the old testament uh particularly the boring books of the old testament I began to realize

00:26:13.820 that the book is claiming to be God's word and there are umpteen prophecies within kings and chronicles

00:26:21.740 that are fulfilled during the lifetime of the that period of the kings themselves so uh I began to take

00:26:29.780 the concept of revelation seriously because also it it also explained the origin of language much better

00:26:36.720 than the evolutionist did how language evolved okay so you view in in your book um particularly in uh let's see

00:26:48.700 in the book that made your world you present a viewpoint that's pretty positively predisposed to

00:26:59.760 science and technology and the enlightenment at least the early periods of the enlightenment but you

00:27:05.020 see them as inextricably inextricably inextricably rooted in a biblical underlay and that as they

00:27:15.080 became more and more divorced from that biblical underlay the more post-modern deviations from the

00:27:21.460 enlightenment pathway or from the productive enlightenment pathway manifested themselves and you also make the

00:27:27.420 case that while in india for example which which I found very interesting that the the distribution

00:27:33.060 of the bible in the native languages of the land had a revolutionary effect and that that effect was also

00:27:40.160 manifested in a broad sense in the west uh against the catholic church and against well everything that

00:27:46.680 and against arbitrary political power political and economic power

00:27:51.220 that's correct the in scottish enlightenment there was no atheist in american enlightenment there were no atheists

00:28:02.780 in british english enlightenment only thomas hobbes was the atheist it was only when you come to the french

00:28:10.780 enlightenment that you have atheists uh and the can end result of uh french enlightenment was disaster 0.84

00:28:19.420 uh our universities were telling us the department of politics etc were telling us that our freedoms come

00:28:27.320 from russo voltaire french uh revolution but they were also telling us that within three years of the

00:28:33.480 start of the french revolution the revolution is themselves described their rule as a reign of terror

00:28:39.880 and within 10 years the whole revolution ended with the dictatorship of napoleon bonaparte so uh the i began to

00:28:48.760 realize that our professors were not either they didn't know the truth that they had been deceived by

00:28:54.360 american universities uh like ancient philosophy political philosophy begins with plato republic plato

00:29:02.820 so the professors are saying the democracy came from greek city states but they are also telling me

00:29:09.280 that plato says the democracy is the worst of all political systems he hated democracy because it was

00:29:16.060 athenian democracy that killed socrates in order to defend the myths so uh professors clearly don't know

00:29:25.200 how we got democracy etc so yes as i looked at the enlightenment and it was of course later david

00:29:34.000 press his book from plato to nato uh that helped me understand why american universities had deceived

00:29:41.520 themselves and a whole century of uh young people believing that the freedoms came from greece

00:29:50.200 the only thing greece ever exported from the enlightenment for that matter but but if the

00:29:55.420 enlightenment's rooted in biblical ideas i mean what i another thing i found particularly interesting

00:30:01.300 about your book is your insistence and i i believe this to be the case that the idea of natural right

00:30:08.260 is embedded in a biblical conception of the sovereignty of the individual and divine worth

00:30:13.560 of the individual and i i think that case is pretty clear historically in relationship to the american

00:30:19.080 declaration of independence but i also think it's clear and you do a lovely job of developing this

00:30:24.180 it's clear that the roots of that idea were essentially biblical the the the both derived both from

00:30:33.220 the old testament and from the new testament particularly genesis and the gospels

00:30:38.260 uh that's correct so going back to those very boring historical books in the bible uh here is uh

00:30:45.620 king ahab married to jezebel 1.00

00:30:48.220 nebot's his neighbor ordinary peasant has a very good vineyard

00:30:54.660 the king wants that vineyard he wants to pay for it uh nebot says no i don't have the right to sell it

00:31:03.240 because my forefathers built it up it belongs to my children and grandchildren

00:31:07.740 the king says i'll give you double the price 10 times the market price he says sorry

00:31:12.740 i don't want to sell it i can't sell it this is not mine to sell

00:31:17.020 no the king is sulking jezebel says to him what's wrong

00:31:22.660 he says well i offered 10 times the market price to this fellow and i offered alternative vineyard to him

00:31:29.220 he won't sell it to me so she says what do you mean are you a king my father is a king

00:31:35.820 in sidon uh do you know how to rule i'll get you the land so she writes a letter to the village elders 0.96

00:31:43.780 to have a feast bring some scoundrels to make false allegations false witnesses stone that fellow

00:31:52.100 she takes the vineyard gives it to elijah uh gives it to ahab the king elijah the prophet is furious

00:32:00.700 he goes to ahab and he confronts him that you have broken every one of god's commandments

00:32:07.400 you have coveted your neighbor's vineyard you have lied about him that he has blasphemed god and king

00:32:15.160 you have killed him when god says you shall not kill you may be the king but there is a law above you

00:32:22.740 which is god's law you shall not kill that's the law that gives inalienable right to life

00:32:29.380 you have been given the authority to rule in order to defend the fundamental inalienable right to life

00:32:36.740 and property and freedom uh but you have violated everything therefore elijah judges the king

00:32:44.560 and the queen and his prophecies turn out to be true that this is what is going to happen that

00:32:50.720 jezebel's blood will be licked by the dogs as what has happened to nebuch's blood so it is as i'm

00:32:59.440 reading these books i began to realize that this is the source of the idea of in india we call it

00:33:06.720 fundamental rights to life and the rule of law and the rule of law which is right right because the rule

00:33:13.100 of law is predicated on an idea that there's a moral order that's superordinate even to the king

00:33:19.620 or the emperor and that's a transcendent moral order that doesn't lie in the hands of any given

00:33:24.820 individual and it is definitely the case that in those old biblical texts the prophetic voice but

00:33:30.300 not always the winners as you pointed out but the prophetic voice that carries the main narrative line

00:33:35.560 continually insists that if those transcendent ethical rules are violated even by the rulers who

00:33:41.720 you would think is it's their prerogative to set whatever rules they want if there's no

00:33:47.020 order outside of them even even the rulers are told by the prophets that they're necessarily

00:33:54.320 subordinate to those rules and that all hell will break loose if they break them yeah this of course

00:34:00.420 became very personal for me when i started this research and writing because there had been a

00:34:06.620 hail storm in 1980 which had flattened the wheat crop in 100 villages i began to organize release

00:34:14.980 and the district magistrate sent me an order formal order that your work is illegal stop it because there

00:34:23.840 is a law in our state that in the event of natural calamity you the no private parties cannot collect

00:34:30.280 donations so i gave a formal response thank you for telling me about this law we will obey it

00:34:36.620 we will not collect any donation we will give i get a second order that if you're not collecting any

00:34:42.780 donation how can you give so your work is illegal so stop it so i wrote formally that the scriptures

00:34:51.500 command us to obey the magistrates so we will obey your order we will not give any relief but we will

00:34:58.620 ask the peasants who are hurting to pray for relief maybe the government itself will grant the relief

00:35:04.540 i got a third order that your prayer meeting is illegal now this was not a christian meeting in a

00:35:11.260 church this was in gandhi ashram uh gandhian style of prayer was very theistic prayer so gandhi ashram

00:35:19.580 would be watching us for several years of what we are doing with the poor they invited me to hold a

00:35:25.580 public prayer meeting in their premises and the district magistrate says this will disturb the

00:35:32.460 peace and tranquility law and order of my district so your prayer meeting is bad now am i now required

00:35:40.060 by the bible to obey the magistrate or is that a right do i have a right to civil disobedience

00:35:49.340 and as we began to look at this responsibility or responsibility for civil disobedience right yes

00:35:55.580 exactly to be a shepherd do i have to stand up against the wolves and uh i was finally thrown into

00:36:02.620 jail that's where i began to take a fresh look at the new testament that jesus is doing good apostles are

00:36:10.380 doing good healing preaching teaching about the kingdom of god why is he crucified why are they being

00:36:16.380 stoned why are they being killed why are they the troublemakers turning the world upside down

00:36:22.140 and that's exactly the point that you made that the rulers a government has authority as the

00:36:30.860 declaration of independence in american constitution says that governments are constituted to defend and

00:36:38.780 promote the laws that are given by the creator every person is made in god's image and endowed by

00:36:45.900 his creator with inalienable rights you give up a biblical framework that the rights come from god his

00:36:55.180 command you shall not kill the superintendent police highly educated officer he called me to his home

00:37:02.940 i sat in his uh living in his lawn in the easy chair for one and a half hours he spent an hour telling 0.81

00:37:10.140 me that if you don't cancel that primary meeting i will personally kill you i don't need to arrest you 0.98

00:37:16.700 i need no warrant i will not produce you before a judge i'll come to your home take you from your 1.00

00:37:21.980 home take you into the jungle shoot you throw your body there the hyenas will eat you are you going to 0.92

00:37:28.780 cancel that premier so uh i said to him of course that i have to consult my wife if she's okay being a 0.98

00:37:35.340 widow uh and then i'll consider your request he realized i wasn't taking him seriously which i wasn't uh

00:37:42.060 because i didn't believe that a highly educated uh gazetted officer of the government of india who has taken an

00:37:49.740 oath to uphold the constitution of india will have such utter disregard for my inalienable right to life

00:37:58.780 to pray uh so uh when i was in jail that's when i began to uh take a fresh look at why is an apostle

00:38:09.580 paul turning the roman world upside down that's what he's accused of why is jesus being crucified and

00:38:18.300 what does the cross have to do with transformation of europe from being a very intolerant brutal society

00:38:28.540 to a civilized tolerant society going online without express vpn is like not paying attention

00:38:37.340 to the safety demonstration on a flight most of the time you'll probably be fine but what if one

00:38:42.460 day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do in our hyper

00:38:47.820 connected world your digital privacy isn't just a luxury it's a fundamental right every time you connect

00:38:53.100 to an unsecured network in a cafe hotel or airport you're essentially broadcasting your personal

00:38:58.460 information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it and let's be clear it doesn't take a

00:39:03.340 genius hacker to do this with some off-the-shelf hardware even a tech savvy teenager could potentially

00:39:08.700 access your passwords bank logins and credit card details now you might think what's the big deal who'd

00:39:14.540 want my data anyway well on the dark web your personal information could fetch up to one thousand

00:39:19.740 dollars that's right there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities enter expressvpn

00:39:26.300 it's like a digital fortress creating an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet their

00:39:31.180 encryption is so robust that it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to crack it

00:39:36.620 but don't let its power fool you expressvpn is incredibly user-friendly with just one click you're

00:39:41.900 protected across all your devices phones laptops tablets you name it that's why i use expressvpn whenever

00:39:47.980 i'm traveling or working from a coffee shop it gives me peace of mind knowing that my research

00:39:52.540 communications and personal data are shielded from prying eyes secure your online data today by

00:39:57.980 visiting expressvpn.com jordan that's e-x-p-r-e-s-s vpn.com jordan and you can get an extra three months free

00:40:06.860 expressvpn.com jordan

00:40:09.260 starting a business can be tough but thanks to shopify running your online storefront is easier

00:40:18.060 than ever shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business

00:40:23.420 from the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage

00:40:28.140 shopify is here to help you grow our marketing team uses shopify every day to sell our merchandise

00:40:33.500 and we love how easy it is to add more items ship products and track conversions with shopify

00:40:39.100 customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful tools alongside

00:40:44.220 an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand printing accounting and chatbots

00:40:49.820 shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout up to 36

00:40:55.340 better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms no matter how big you want to grow

00:40:59.820 shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level

00:41:04.620 sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp all lowercase go to

00:41:10.940 shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in that's shopify.com slash jbp

00:41:21.740 yeah well you know i talk to my audiences across the united states and say well it seems obvious to me

00:41:29.820 which doesn't mean it's true that societies that societies that are desirable are free societies and

00:41:38.300 free societies are predicated on rule of law the law independent of the and transcendent in relationship

00:41:45.660 to the rulers and on a conception of man that gives every individual an intrinsic dignity that basically

00:41:54.140 has a religious substructure and that to the degree that we are citizens of those lands and we believe

00:42:01.260 in the principles by which they operate then we we're bound to accept that view because without accepting

00:42:09.180 that view the whole system makes no sense like the foundation stone is pulled out from underneath it

00:42:14.860 and that's that's quite the conundrum you know that there's a biblical vision underpinning the states that

00:42:22.540 are the most productive now the radical types the leftists in particular say well the reason that

00:42:28.460 the west is um wealthy and free is because it was built on the backs of the poor and in in in the west and

00:42:38.860 also in the third world but one of the reasons i found your book so interesting is that you're not so

00:42:44.060 fond of that viewpoint you look at india for example and as far as i could tell you believe that the

00:42:50.540 distribution of the biblical narrative in india has clearly been a net positive and so maybe you

00:42:57.420 could outline a little bit of indian history because i think people would find that very

00:43:00.940 interesting the british came in india was fragmented into hundreds of cities or states small states ruled

00:43:07.820 over in many cases by muslims that was the scene when the british arrived and the british had their 0.72

00:43:13.420 problems but the but the in but the introduction of the biblical narrative into india in your estimation

00:43:20.940 had a positively transformative effect much like it had in in western europe uh that's true thank you

00:43:27.980 you you're doing a wonderful job in uh arguing the case that you just outlined and i hope that many

00:43:35.020 people in the west and in the east will listen to you uh because uh well we don't believe it anymore 0.92

00:43:40.940 eh that's the thing but it's also partly it's because we're so damn ignorant eh i mean i was 0.93

00:43:45.980 struck by reading in reading your book how much i didn't know you know for example and this is very 0.83

00:43:51.500 embarrassing to relate i didn't realize i knew india was fragmented before it was unified into a

00:43:56.780 modern nation state but i didn't know it was fragmented and fundamentally ruled in many cases by

00:44:01.820 the muslim empire then i just didn't know that and that's pathetic that i didn't know that and i also 0.76

00:44:07.500 your book also helped me understand see in the west now we tend to think of the entire christian

00:44:15.660 tradition as oppressive in the catholic sense and i'm not criticizing the catholics by the way

00:44:22.540 that it was a mono a monopolistic belief system that was fundamentally oppressive now your book helped

00:44:30.380 me understand to what degree that oppression if it existed was a remnant of the roman empire and

00:44:36.620 the empire world view and that it was the introduction of the bible and its distribution

00:44:42.300 in all the vernaculars that actually blew the remaining empire part of christianity into fragments

00:44:49.180 and in and then in a very positive way and that's an analogous as i said to the effect of

00:44:55.500 the christian or the the biblical narrative on india which yep so please please go ahead with the indian

00:45:03.740 story that's true in the year 1000 is when from afghanistan through khyber path uh khyber pass um

00:45:13.020 mahmoud kazni the an invader began to invade india and attack so between 1000 1031 he came about 0.69

00:45:23.820 16 17 times looting primarily temples religious temples because that's where the wealth was the

00:45:31.740 the kings will store the wealth in the temples uh and he would loot the temple uh there was a very

00:45:38.060 small uh khyber pass only one place from where invaders could come from afghanistan uh and parashia etc

00:45:47.580 india could have built a small wall of india we didn't need a great wall of india to keep the invaders 0.51

00:45:53.660 out but the indian rulers never built this small wall to the point that 100 almost 200 years later

00:46:03.100 1191 uh muhammad gauri comes from afghanistan all the way to delhi almost a thousand kilometers uh and

00:46:13.100 he fights with the hindu king of delhi he loses goes back 1192 he comes back defeats prithvirachahan kills him

00:46:22.780 and uh delhi is taken over by muslims in 1192 so what has weakened and the hindu kingdoms from

00:46:34.540 1000 to 1192 almost 200 to 200 years is a religious ritual called the horse sacrifice

00:46:43.500 ashwamed yagya hindu kings are sending a horse and behind the horse are a few hundred young men 0.62

00:46:52.780 they're going into a village either village becomes their property and begins to pay tribute to their

00:46:58.220 king or there is they have to fight a war so the at that time delhi is small a bigger kingdom is kandaj

00:47:07.260 the two hindu kings are sons of real sisters so their first cousins one of the kings of kandajan he

00:47:17.820 starts this ashwamedyag horse sacrifice but his brother who is smaller kingdom but more competent ruler he

00:47:27.820 refuses to accept the sovereignty of his cousin so hatred develops between two cousins who are

00:47:36.700 governing two important kingdoms in north india so after in 1192 when the muslim invader has been 1.00

00:47:45.340 defeated by the king of delhi the king of kandajan he invites the muslim invader to please come back 1.00

00:47:53.500 kill my brother and that's how delhi is taken over by muslims and then muslims different dynasties 1.00

00:48:01.180 different uh uh kinds of muslims rule india until it ruled delhi until 1858 so how much and how much 0.97

00:48:11.820 to what degree were they ruling over the rest of what was india as well at during that period of

00:48:17.180 time it was expanding and contracting the mughal empire for about uh 200 years or so was the most

00:48:24.540 expansive but so the british had begun to come during the uh mughal empire uh but only to trade with

00:48:33.980 permission the french came the done and what was the consequence of the mughal empire well in in 0.94

00:48:39.980 relationship to the to the typical indians life and and to the structure of the state they build the

00:48:45.180 taj mahal but they didn't build wheelbarrows for the laborers who were carrying bricks and stones

00:48:54.540 so you build pyramids you build taj mahal you build palaces this is the whole middle middle ages but

00:49:00.620 you don't care for the wheelbarrows so even today women are carrying bricks and stones and mud and 1.00

00:49:08.780 cement on their head as they're building four-story halls because you don't care for the poor so india was 0.99

00:49:16.780 weakened by what a religious ritual uh ashwamedya which was supposed to be 0.96

00:49:23.500 a king very strong so kings did become strong nation became weak and divided which allowed

00:49:30.620 muslim rulers and then french and british and others to come and take over so uh india for a thousand 0.91

00:49:38.460 years almost um eight nine hundred years was slave now there were pockets of hindu kingdoms but some of

00:49:47.100 those hindu kingdoms were worse even compared to the muslim ruler like south india uh travencore 1.00

00:49:56.620 right and these and these all these rulers hindu and muslim alike existed in a completely exploitative 0.96

00:50:01.660 relationship in relationship to their subjects there was no conception of of individual worth as

00:50:07.660 you point out there was no conception that the life of a slave let alone a female slave let's say

00:50:13.660 or even a female period for that matter had any real intrinsic value that unfortunately is correct

00:50:20.620 let me give you a very shameful example of what this means so in south india in what is now

00:50:27.500 trivandrum travencore no lower caste woman was allowed to cover her top 0.97

00:50:37.340 uh if she covered her top she has to prepare breast tax which depends on the size of her breast 1.00

00:50:45.020 um now even the upper caste women in travencore this is kerala south india they when they go into

00:50:56.060 the temple they have to remove their upper cloth because you're honoring the priests you have to be

00:51:02.460 bare-chested on the street if a a noble uh someone from noble family royalty is passing through on the

00:51:10.860 street the upper caste women have to take their cloth off and throw petals flower petals this is 1.00

00:51:19.340 hindu india while the british are ruling in india so this these parts of history are suppressed

00:51:26.940 because they are shameful and obviously they are shameful that there is more slavery in the hindu 0.94

00:51:33.580 kingdom of travencore in south india than in the muslim uh kingdom in the north so

00:51:41.180 so this is partly because of caste system so the horse sacrifice was one thing that had weakened india

00:51:49.580 caste system had weakened india because if the kings are exploiting my wealth and putting that wealth

00:51:57.900 in gold uh and silver and diamonds in the temples when an invader comes and attacks the king why should i

00:52:06.620 sacrifice my life why should i fight and defend my kingdom because i have no stake in this kingdom

00:52:13.820 you are treating me as untouchable and this is what is happening in india today every day that uh the

00:52:21.180 lower caste people who are trying to recover their dignity that the hindu religious system has made me

00:52:28.380 lower than animals jesus christ is making me a human being a child of god you won't allow me to enter your

00:52:36.060 temple jesus is making me a priest of the most high god so if they want to convert there's persecution

00:52:43.900 happening every day in india and the supreme okay so now you also made the case that in the caste system

00:52:50.700 for example that i thought this was very interesting and quite damning from a modern perspective or maybe

00:52:55.980 from a biblical perspective not so much a modern that there was no sense in the hindu caste structure

00:53:04.380 that the poor and downtrodden and let's say the untouchables were to be revered or served or regarded 1.00

00:53:11.260 as intrinsically noble partly because the doctrine of karma was predicated on the assumption a that they

00:53:18.780 deserved their suffering had earned it in some cosmic sense and b that if you did even attempt to alleviate

00:53:25.180 their suffering all you did all you were doing cosmically was prolonging it because the suffering

00:53:30.540 that they had garnered as a consequence of karma was deserved and was going to be played out no

00:53:35.580 matter who interfered with it and so there wasn't just an absence of care let's say in some sense

00:53:41.900 for the downtrodden and the outcast but there was an insistence that they deserved their position

00:53:47.980 and that anything that might be done to help them would actually be counterproductive now have i got that

00:53:53.180 right yes uh except i'll take a little farther that is that inequality is self-evident truth

00:54:03.740 including in america that men and women are equal was never self-evident to americans whites and black

00:54:10.940 slaves are equal was never self-evident to jeffersons and washington's and the american founding fathers

00:54:17.900 equality is not a self-evident truth inequality yeah quite the contrary right you could say that

00:54:25.420 that equality is so non-self-evident that it would take the divine fiat to make it a reality exactly

00:54:32.540 so yeah i know that's a powerful argument and jefferson knew that therefore in the declaration of

00:54:39.020 independence he wrote we hold these truths to be sacred that all men are created well it was benjamin

00:54:46.300 franklin who put pressure on him and he was trying to please thomas pain the deist the rationalist

00:54:53.660 the plural we can't say that this truth is revealed to us by sacred writings so right say we hold these

00:55:00.700 truths to be self-evident well i think it was it might be fair to say that those truths are self-evident

00:55:06.780 in a culture that's absolutely saturated by protestant biblical presumptions but they're not

00:55:12.460 self-evident otherwise yeah they were not self-evident 500 years ago when martin luther discovered

00:55:18.860 priesthood and kingship of fallen believers because at that time if a christian went to the church in

00:55:24.780 germany average christian only got the bread symbol of christ's body not the wine the symbol of blood the

00:55:33.580 uh blood was only for the priests so the the division between priests and laity resulted in war

00:55:43.260 because if all men are created equal if every child of god is supposed to serve god as his priest

00:55:50.220 manage his kingdom as a king then uh this was a revolution a theological revolution so yes and it was

00:55:59.260 resisted that was part of the reason i suppose that the translation of the bible was resisted by so

00:56:04.700 many people in the hierarchical church because people knew they knew full well that if the actual

00:56:10.780 words were distributed widely that that would create a bottom-up revolution as people realized

00:56:16.860 their fundamental not only their equality but more than that their equality before god and

00:56:22.540 their fundamental worth and their capability of having a relationship with truth and there is maybe no

00:56:28.220 more revolutionary doctrine than that you know it hit home for me how revolutionary the book is

00:56:33.820 and even even in western history that's absolutely true so uh that doctrine of human equality the first

00:56:42.460 thing it does in germany 1524 1525 is the peasants war uh i'll come back to that but yeah before that before

00:56:52.860 luther translates the bible into german you have wickliff in oxford who is translating the bible into

00:56:59.420 english along with his friends uh this is before printing existed before gutenberg and it wasn't

00:57:06.060 wickliff killed for his trouble was he was he burned fortunately not after he had been buried his bones were dug

00:57:14.780 out bones oh yes his bones were burned and the ashes were scattered but he didn't die

00:57:22.460 because part of his time there were two popes or three and for a while there were three popes

00:57:27.500 fighting with each other each of them wanted british support and wickliff had become a hero in britain

00:57:34.940 because uh over taxation so the british was so he escaped that doom but they got tyndall i believe

00:57:41.580 yeah if i remember correctly yes tyndall was burned uh but tyndall is 150 or so years after wickliff

00:57:48.780 uh but so well so that's that's even that's interesting even that that the resistance to the

00:57:53.420 translation lasted multiple centuries it wasn't a flash in the pan it was an extremely dangerous act

00:57:59.660 to translate the bible into a vernacular language and you've got to ask yourself why

00:58:04.220 you're absolutely right because it was bishop arundale the archbishop of uh canterbury who uh banned

00:58:16.780 wickliff's bible and prohibited that no one is allowed to translate the bible into english without

00:58:24.940 permission so tyndall spent a whole year knocking at the doors of three bishops trying to get permission

00:58:32.060 to translate the bible into english all three of them refused so he uh became a refugee he uh which

00:58:39.660 was also illegal to leave england without permission he left england went to wittenberg under luther

00:58:46.300 began to translate the bible the new testament then he came to belgium that's where he printed it

00:58:52.060 to smuggle it into england so anyone who was found 100 years earlier with a page of wickliff's

00:59:01.020 bible hand copied uh he could be burned at stake because the church has banned translation of the

00:59:10.060 bible so the bible was an explosive revolutionary book okay okay so let's let's go back to india then so

00:59:17.980 now you have the muslim ruling the muslims ruling india and you have the hindu gods or the hindu kings 0.92

00:59:24.060 ruling india and it's a a caste structured society and there's no shortage of oppression and there's 0.94

00:59:30.380 no real development at the individual level and the british start a mercantile relationship and then

00:59:36.060 the biblical corpus and enters the indian landscape through the operation fundamentally of the british but

00:59:41.660 of missionaries not the mercantilists per se yes although a fair number of the christian

00:59:47.340 influenced british politicians were all already pushing favorably for india india's independent

00:59:54.140 development several hundred years ago way before it actually happened yes now a few missionaries

01:00:00.300 from europe had come to south india before the british missionary movement got going and they had

01:00:07.660 begun to translate the bible into some of the south indian languages etc but this was small private

01:00:14.460 initiative the missionary movement per se got started only in 1793 when william carey a cobbler

01:00:23.020 in england he was a baptist so he was not allowed to go into oxford or cambridge these were anglican

01:00:28.460 universities so he taught himself on while working as a cobbler latin greek hebrew geography politics

01:00:36.700 mission maybe history etc and he wrote a book a small book inquiring whether the contemporary church

01:00:46.940 is under an obligation to go and evangelize the world disciple all nations or was that a command

01:00:53.980 given only for the first generation of apostles so his book and inquiry into obligation of the christians

01:01:02.300 to disciple all nations it's it's a very long title that's what begins the modern missionary movement

01:01:09.660 but ironically uh 1793 when his book is published is the year when the british parliament banned

01:01:19.180 missionaries from going to india so the east india british east india company is governing

01:01:27.420 bengal which includes bangladesh asam etc that's a large part of eastern india but missionaries are

01:01:35.820 not allowed because evangelical movement is already creating problem for africa the british rule in africa

01:01:45.100 because british companies are bringing african slaves in british ships selling them in caribbeans and

01:01:52.220 south america north america and evangelical conscience which believes that all human beings

01:01:58.380 are equal therefore slavery is immoral they are creating problems and it is the members of house of

01:02:05.980 lord in england who have stake in these companies they don't want missionaries to go we're having a

01:02:12.860 good time in africa and india we're making a lot of money we don't want morality injected into business

01:02:19.820 um right but it does get injected wilberforce manages it unbelievably well and you know one of the

01:02:26.140 things that i've really been struck by lately is this um this this post-modern and radical leftist insistence

01:02:37.260 that exploitation is wrong i think well why do you think exploitation is wrong you have to buy the doctrine

01:02:45.020 of the inalienable rights of the individual and the natural rights of the individual and the divine

01:02:50.860 worth of the individual before slavery is wrong and you don't buy any of that but if you do but if you

01:02:57.020 do buy it you end up like wilbur like wilberforce and you put yourself on the line to what to cost cost

01:03:05.260 england a tremendous fortune over a multiple decades to eradicate slavery around the world because of its

01:03:11.340 moral inappropriateness because of the sacred nature of each individual that's absolutely right that

01:03:18.700 if a woman is an animal and i can buy a cow keep a cow in lock and chain and sell a cow why can't i buy 1.00

01:03:29.420 girls keep them locked and sell them is a girl different than an animal does she have yeah and if power is the 1.00

01:03:38.140 if power is the only force that is real and the only force that's credible then obviously you can

01:03:45.340 buy and sell if you have the power to do it you can only not do that in some fundamental sense if there's

01:03:51.100 a transcendent order let's say that that can use each individual with fundamental worth the inalienable

01:03:57.500 right to liberty that a woman cannot be kept in cage because she is made in god's image who is free

01:04:06.140 yeah so this well i've been thinking i've been thinking about that practically too you know so

01:04:10.860 think imagine it this way so the reason that you have the right to liberty is so that you let's say

01:04:19.420 you have the right to conscience and you have the right to conscience so that you can make

01:04:23.180 appropriate ethical decisions and states depend on ethical individuals to make appropriate

01:04:29.420 ethical decisions to keep the states from crumbling which is basically the stories that go

01:04:34.380 throughout the old testament is that when all the individuals who make up a state become enslaved

01:04:39.260 or become so corrupt that they no longer make appropriate decisions the entire state is doomed

01:04:44.700 and everybody collapses into slavery and so you have you have your freedom you have your liberty not so that

01:04:51.740 you can do whatever you want but so that you can exercise your conscience in relationship to your

01:04:56.220 well let's say divine calling that's absolutely right the idea of conscience is foundational to

01:05:04.700 whole of western political philosophy that the reality is that in human body there is no organ called

01:05:12.300 conscience conscience is an aspect of human soul the spiritual dimension of a human being where my conscience 1.00

01:05:22.940 judges judges me that you're lying that you're shoplifting you are a thief you're a liar you're a sinner 0.97

01:05:29.660 so conscience is um the image of god in me which can be corrupted right but can be reformed so this this is of 0.99

01:05:39.900 course the fundamental source of liberty when uh 1521 22 uh martin luther is standing in the diet of worms

01:05:49.900 the emperor has called for luther to be tried because the roman empire cannot be divided when

01:05:58.700 the turks are attacking it he wants unity so he wants luther to explain himself and he says okay these

01:06:05.100 are your books yes sir and these are the books of the church fathers yes sir your books contradict

01:06:11.820 the books that the church fathers have written for a long time yes sir they do so will you recant

01:06:17.740 he's not given an opportunity to defend himself because you are contradicting what the church fathers 0.98

01:06:24.300 have said you should recant otherwise you are a heretic that means that any christian can kill you 0.90

01:06:31.820 and will go to heaven so luther takes 24 hours and that happened just uh two three weeks ago the 500th 0.58

01:06:39.740 anniversary of the diet of worms when luther spends a whole night in prayer that do i recant save my life

01:06:48.860 or do i remain true to my conscience so he makes that classic statement uh that uh i it's not safe it's not

01:06:59.820 right to go against one's conscience i will recant i'm not being proud and arrogant i will recant if you

01:07:07.260 convince me from scriptures and claim reason if not i'm sorry i can't repent so help me god that's

01:07:16.300 here i stand here i stand so help me god now that doctrine of conscience it comes from paul uses the

01:07:24.940 word repeatedly in uh his epistles such as timothy and titus that this is the true religion not all the

01:07:32.700 rituals not all the sacraments but to keep your heart clean pure right it's the prophetic voice

01:07:39.500 within essentially yes so that then is debated and um milton john milton the puritan poet uses it in his

01:07:51.500 argument for aria pagitica in aria pagitica when he argues for liberty to even if i'm wrong i should have

01:07:59.420 the freedom to express my false ideas you should counter my false ideas with um uh arguments and

01:08:07.580 evidence not by the sword this yeah that's part of the refinement of conscience you could say that

01:08:14.060 so then at that time during oliver cromwell's long reign long parliament appoints westminster assembly

01:08:23.580 assembly assembly of 70 or so theologians who write westminster confession uh chapter 20 is the

01:08:31.500 chapter on conscience it was so the parliament accepts westminster confession as the summary of

01:08:39.260 biblical christianity and it was true that that conscience enters the doctor the political philosophy of

01:08:49.020 the west that the the root of it goes back to 1528 lecture sermon that and how does that how does that

01:08:57.180 parallel wilber wilberforce's emergence as an anti-slavery campaigner he he comes to 300 years later uh

01:09:04.540 yeah but the the background of it is martin luther's sermon which john locke quotes in his letter concerning

01:09:12.460 toleration which uh medicine james madison when introducing bill of rights in america he quotes

01:09:19.500 martin luther's sermon it's called on two kingdoms there are two kingdoms kingdom of christ which has come

01:09:27.020 into this world and the kingdom of man the emperor and the church the pope have authority over me in some

01:09:36.540 areas but the church doesn't own my soul emperor doesn't own my soul if i have accepted jesus as my

01:09:44.220 lord it's god's kingdom has come into my heart christ is my lord he's the king of kings he's the ruler of

01:09:52.940 the kings of the earth therefore my heart belongs to jesus and the government has no business in interfering

01:10:01.420 with my conscience with my okay so now now these ideas come into india and you talked about the

01:10:06.620 missionary distribution in the vernacular and one of the things you do quite nicely i thought in in in

01:10:12.220 the book that made your world is detail out the effects on the language and the culture of the societies

01:10:21.580 in which to which the bible was uh what would you say where the to the languages in the societies that

01:10:28.780 were provided with or offered a translation of the bible because it meant a codification of the

01:10:33.980 language and often the transformation of what was only a spoken language into a written language to the

01:10:41.020 demarcation of the language as a consequence to the possibility of a written civilization and then also

01:10:48.540 to the possibility of that society now developing its own literature literary vernacular as an offshoot of

01:10:56.220 the of the of the biblical corpus a very interesting development of the word a as a consequence of the

01:11:02.780 translation efforts because they often get pilloried in the west right because the missionaries are seen as

01:11:07.820 part of this oppressive western colonial movement that that the radical types who criticize it don't

01:11:14.460 differentiate right they they just assume it's a unit a unipolar oppressive mechanism that's that's orchestrated from the top down and purely exploitive

01:11:25.180 uh absolutely so wilberforce is a central figure in this three things flow out of his 20-year battle

01:11:34.140 on behalf of india uh one is permitting missionaries to go as educators because all the education was

01:11:43.900 department of the church it didn't become a department of the state uh until much later so at that time

01:11:50.860 every teacher there's a reverend you know university teachers etc bishop is the chancellor uh of the

01:11:57.740 universities so uh bilberforce is uh he fought for 20 years that it's not enough to uh send only soldiers

01:12:06.940 and traders to india we must god could not have their belief in providence that history is not uh a mindless

01:12:16.620 uh series of accidents that there is god or a repetitive cycle yes there is providence guiding

01:12:24.060 history god called abraham isaac and jacob you follow me i will bless you i will bless all the

01:12:30.460 nations through you so blessing india was part of god's plan he could not possibly have given india

01:12:37.420 two british east india company to be exploited but to be blessed therefore we must send missionaries

01:12:44.540 to educate india so that they can govern themselves so the it takes 20 years he loses okay so that we

01:12:51.900 should let's let's let's let's not gloss over that too quickly so what we have here is in the midst of

01:12:57.900 um structure that could have turned into a permanent empire we have a movement within that empire itself

01:13:05.260 that draws on its own conscience to reveal to itself that any continued history of exploitation regardless of

01:13:13.260 how profitable is immoral now that happens with the slave trade and it happens in the case of

01:13:18.140 well much of the british empire but particularly in india so they're working against their own

01:13:22.700 financial um interests in in many in many ways it's certainly the case with the war against the slave trade

01:13:29.580 absolutely and so that's very weird right we want to remark on just how strange that is that's unheard of

01:13:36.700 well let me illustrate that africa point first british ships are going to africa britain is industrial

01:13:45.420 country it is producing a lot of things it's taking them selling them in africa africa is not producing

01:13:51.100 anything at that point so the ships have to go empty to the caribbeans or the america 0.91

01:13:58.620 there's a limit to how many monkeys and zebras you can take

01:14:02.540 so they begin to take slaves which are needed in the caribbeans and the tea plantations and other

01:14:08.300 plantations so you take the slaves and then they're making sugar and you're bringing sugar back to

01:14:16.140 europe so this triangle of trade if the ships are going empty from africa to the to the americas then the

01:14:26.220 shipping business in yeah and slavery and slavery can get a slavery can get a toehold because it's way

01:14:32.380 outside on the fringes of the of commercial activity and invisible at least to begin with

01:14:37.980 and in some sense and if your ships are not allowed to take slaves the spanish will the portuguese will

01:14:43.820 so you might as well so uh when wilberforce is fighting against slave trade he is hurting

01:14:52.300 the britain's economic interest and everybody knows that and that's why it takes a whole lifetime

01:14:58.620 i've read calculations that the british spent more fighting the slave trade than they gained

01:15:03.020 economically from supporting slavery to begin with by quite a large margin i don't know if that's true

01:15:08.460 you know no no that's true that's that's what adam smith had already argued in uh his book the

01:15:17.340 wealth of the nations was published 1776 the same year as american independence and he argues that free

01:15:25.660 worker is much more productive and profitable than a slave so right so that was true except that

01:15:32.780 that was an academic theory uh in reality the shipping company needs to take some something from africa

01:15:41.660 to america's uh to make the navigation work so uh in the end whether the slaves are more productive or 0.99

01:15:49.900 harmful right right right is an is an economic debate but so this is why wilberforce is a troublemaker

01:15:59.260 he never called goes to india but he's important for abolition of sati widow birding as well but he has

01:16:06.940 two main assistants zachary mccauley is his right hand man again against his fight against slavery

01:16:17.740 charles grant is wilberforce's right hand man charles grant actually becomes a member of parliament

01:16:23.980 and becomes the director of east india company he is wilberforce's right hand man

01:16:29.260 again about how to reform india beginning with how to reform the british misrule in india

01:16:36.060 because he has personally seen that east india company in governing india is a gang of public

01:16:43.740 robbers lord mccauley the son of zachary mccauley he's the one who called east india companies rule

01:16:51.100 for the first 50 years as a gang of public robbers rule of an evil genie because the soldiers and traders

01:16:58.780 who had come to india they were basically riffraff of british society like the conquistadors in yes in 0.98

01:17:06.540 the new world correct so they were looting did god give india to us so that we might loot india this

01:17:16.460 was the conscience troubling charles grant and he wrote the book in 1793 at the request of wilberforce

01:17:25.500 it was not published in 93 it was hand copied they had copies in those days this was for the

01:17:32.380 members of parliament because the charter of east india company they had the monopoly so the charter

01:17:38.140 had to be renewed every 20 years and in this was written to influence the renewal of the charter and to

01:17:45.500 insert a missionary clause so from 1793 onwards grant begins to play a very important role although

01:17:54.380 wilberforce is the face the political face of that movement so they a fight for um education

01:18:05.500 and the parliament finally in 18 yeah they granted a hundred thousand is that they granted a hundred thousand

01:18:12.220 pounds or they forced the the distribution of a hundred thousand pounds uh hundred thousand rupees

01:18:17.260 which was sorry rupees yeah equal of the pound more or less that from its profit east india company must

01:18:26.460 spend hundred thousand rupees for public education so that we begin to train indians to govern india

01:18:34.700 now this right again a revolutionary an unbelievably revolutionary concept it's it's unprecedented it's

01:18:43.020 anti-empire in the extreme and and uh lord macaulay who argued and finally won the debate in parliament

01:18:51.740 in 1833 he says exactly what you're saying that uh this has never happened but this would be our good

01:19:00.300 greatest glory not that we are ruling over illiterate people but that we found people living in darkness

01:19:09.420 incapable of governing themselves and we so ruled over them that they became capable of ruling themselves okay

01:19:17.980 now so let's take that apart a bit because you know the the radical types again are going to insist that

01:19:23.820 england or that britain imposed english as a language on on india and that that the fundamental again the

01:19:30.780 fundamental orientation was exploitative but one of the things that you point out quite clearly is that

01:19:36.700 the missionary types in particular driven by their biblical presuppositions did everything they could

01:19:43.260 to translate the bible itself into the local vernaculars into every language that anybody has

01:19:48.220 spoke and that's part of that general missionary evangelizing proclivity i went to the museum of the

01:19:54.780 bible in washington they have a really it's a great museum by the way um they have a very interesting

01:20:00.220 room there that contains virtually every one copy of a bible translated into almost all the languages that

01:20:10.220 the bible has been translated into and there's a variety of empty shelves although a small proportion

01:20:17.100 that are devoted to the next decades i think they figured the bible will be translated into virtually every

01:20:24.380 living language within 40 years from now something like that and so those biblical translators had

01:20:31.740 tremendous respect for the local vernaculars they translate they transformed them into written languages which

01:20:37.420 was no small feat and they enabled all of those people to start to learn to read and to think for

01:20:43.260 themselves that's that's how it looks right so and it's likewise the case that in europe the monasteries

01:20:49.980 were the the the central focus of what became partly industrial production and also institutes of higher

01:20:58.300 higher education so this idea that the the biblical world was was opposed to education and to enlightenment

01:21:09.020 in general that's fault that's just false it's backwards absolutely true um everyone agreed whether

01:21:19.100 christians or non-christians politicians everyone agreed that if india had to be reformed vernaculars had to be

01:21:27.260 developed because that is what happened in europe latin was the language of learning

01:21:35.900 language of course but with the reformation german and french and english and spanish and

01:21:43.180 purge purge every language began to be developed and so because that's what the principle of human 0.98

01:21:51.980 equality meant that uh every child should be able to study in his own mother tongue in his own heart

01:21:59.820 language right well every every soul had to be reached yes but also not just reached to be taken to heaven

01:22:09.340 but reached to become king because the lamb of god shed his blood so that slaves of satan are transformed into

01:22:19.180 the sons of the sons of god serving their father managing his affairs doing his his will in their life

01:22:26.780 and making sure that god's will is being done on earth so everyone becomes a king and therefore

01:22:32.700 the truth of god what is god's will i can't do god's will if i don't know god and if i don't know his will

01:22:39.500 so everyone has to be educated in his own mother tongue this is what begins this is the thrust of the

01:22:47.820 entire missionary enterprise british and non-british in india but the question is what exactly will develop

01:22:56.940 indian vernaculars no pundit no imam had any interest in any of indian languages at that time india had three

01:23:09.340 classical languages sanskrit was the language of brahmans but only of males arabic was the language of

01:23:18.860 the mosque of imams and the only and the only uh language that the quran could be uh distributed in

01:23:26.940 at that time and persian so mughal empire humayu had made persian the official court language of india

01:23:37.820 in order to keep the non-persian speaking muslims away from the throne 1.00

01:23:44.380 so the persian was a sophisticated language but in india it was used as a language of discrimination

01:23:51.660 just as sanskrit was used as a language of discrimination against women against lower

01:23:57.020 caste so no hindu muslim scholar had any interest in any of indian languages the current national

01:24:05.660 language hindi didn't exist urdu didn't exist there were dialects that these missionaries

01:24:13.420 began to transform first was hindustani well right that and we should concentrate on that too because

01:24:19.260 people don't really understand this you know when i went to switzerland in 1982 there were still

01:24:26.540 places in the backwoods in switzerland where the people at the top of the mountain spoke a language

01:24:31.660 so different from the people at the bottom that they couldn't understand each other

01:24:35.820 and so the rule of thumb for languages isn't well the language is basically comprehensible by everyone but

01:24:43.020 there are various accents the rule is that there's an unbelievable multitude of dialects

01:24:48.460 such that people in one village can't understand the people in the next village

01:24:52.940 and so then the european missionaries come in and start to codify and unite these languages

01:24:58.220 and also to give them their written expression first of all developing an alphabet often

01:25:04.220 correct so um this the the question that really occupied was that once you have these hundred thousand rupees

01:25:17.580 how is that money going to be used and there were processes who were saying that we should use this money to

01:25:25.580 teach sanskrit arabic and persian so there was already sanskrit college in banaras funded by east india

01:25:33.820 company and calcutta madasa teaching arabic funded by east india company but others began to say

01:25:40.460 that look if somebody masters all the sanskrit literature and all the arabic literature he or

01:25:46.860 she is not going to be give the able to give to in vernacular knowledge of science knowledge of economics 0.92

01:25:54.940 knowledge of technology of law of right these these productive these productive fields which you also

01:26:00.700 whose development you also traced in large part to the monastic tradition yes so that's why it was

01:26:07.820 the anglicist argued that we can't educate everybody with the limited money that i have

01:26:14.940 we have therefore let's teach english so there will be a group of indians small group of indians who are

01:26:23.740 able to read english literature and take the knowledge from england give it into bengali give

01:26:31.340 it into gujarati and hindi so lang english language was brought to india to empower indian vernaculars

01:26:41.340 now we have many high caste hindus did you suppose that there's a single university in the west that actually teaches that fact 1.00

01:26:47.740 well a friend of mine took these ideas which you have read and wrote a phd thesis which was submitted to

01:26:57.340 the university of nakpur five brahmans were appointed to study his thesis before giving him a phd they took

01:27:04.460 five years to investigate his thesis because he was showing that every single modern indian vernacular

01:27:11.260 language is creation of bible language is creation of bible translators after five years they gave him a phd

01:27:18.220 and they wrote in their recommendation letter that when his book is published it should be a required

01:27:24.940 reading in all the department of linguistics that every single modern language is a creation of bible

01:27:33.180 translators uh and that's that's absolutely unbelievable and and you i i just can't imagine

01:27:41.580 that being accepted without a tremendous amount of resistance anywhere that idea anywhere in the west

01:27:47.660 his book is called let there be india it's a big book the shorter version is still in print the bigger

01:27:54.700 version we have to reprint um but you're absolutely right that right now there are about hundred dialects in

01:28:02.540 india which are being transformed into literary languages right right missionaries who are risking them

01:28:10.300 these are indian missionaries who are going into remote areas tribal areas hill hills uh sacrificing

01:28:18.300 everything uh in order to uh transform these people because a civilization can only grow as far as their 0.86

01:28:27.580 language will take them a stone age tribe doesn't have you can't teach science to them you can't teach 1.00

01:28:36.220 business law to them because their dialect doesn't have the vocabulary the grammar the structure

01:28:42.780 to make these books available so a bible transfer what do you think what do you think of arguments that

01:28:49.420 might point out that that the counter argument might be well why should we um assume that the benefits

01:28:57.500 of say western civilization or biblical civilization for that matter should be imposed on these people 1.00

01:29:05.500 why can't we let them just pursue their own development why should we assume that there's anything

01:29:09.660 superior about uh biblical civilization in relationship to stone age life yes uh that's a valid question

01:29:19.340 uh my wife and i wrote a book on william carey uh the father of modern india who was the main figure behind

01:29:29.260 this bible translation and publications for the first 40 years uh of the modern india now he was also the

01:29:38.140 man who fought against widow burning he yes burned alive he fought you also have an interesting story in your

01:29:45.660 book about a girl that was starved to death by her parents actually yes but i i all actually i also

01:29:53.820 began a fight against revival of video burning in uh 1987 an 18 year old widow was burnt alive

01:30:03.260 that's when i began to discover these uh builders of modern india right as part of an equally valid

01:30:08.940 alternate cultural tradition yes but the point i was making was that a lady speaking in harvard university

01:30:19.420 was showed our book on william carey to her audience and she said that here is a gentleman

01:30:27.340 a cobbler turned linguist the father of modern india who helped abolish widow burning

01:30:33.820 and an american caucasian white woman doing phd in harvard she got mad at the speaker what right 0.70

01:30:44.300 did this yeah white english man have to say that burning videos alive is bad well that's a good that's

01:30:52.460 exactly the question we asked earlier about slavery if you don't buy the doctrine that women have

01:30:58.860 in have what in permanent and and uh divinely valuable souls and and the kind of kingship

01:31:08.940 in principle that you describe then there's nothing stopping you from doing that except

01:31:15.020 the arbitrary facts of chance and society you have to have a view of of the individual as made in the

01:31:23.340 image of god and equal before the law yeah in consequence before you can say that that's self

01:31:30.860 evidently wrong that's how it looks to me exactly so here is harvard university teaching a phd scholar

01:31:39.020 that all cultures are equally valid if a culture burns the widow alive that's valid should be respected 0.64

01:31:48.140 and what if they gas the jews how's that for valid or what if they kill six million ukrainians that okay 0.92

01:31:54.540 too about the jews they have very strong presence in hollywood so uh harvard would be afraid of taking 0.96

01:32:02.300 on hollywood because there are some boundaries arbitrary boundaries but the the jews and right but but

01:32:10.140 it isn't much of it isn't much of a leap from widow burning to to to the holocaust furnaces it's just a

01:32:16.300 matter of scale exactly so when we first hand discovered infanticide in india you just alluded

01:32:25.260 to it this little girl sheila 18 month old being starved to death by tell that story tell that story

01:32:33.180 that's a very interesting story well i was we had ruth and i had my wife ruth and i had just moved into

01:32:40.300 uh a village in the middle of nowhere uh in chattapur district madhapadesh and i was writing my first

01:32:50.540 book the world of gurus which was later than published by the uh biggest publisher in asia vikas and it

01:32:59.260 became a textbook in many universities including cambridge so in study of contemporary hinduism was using my

01:33:07.580 book so that's what makes me an indian philosopher uh who studied hinduism written a book so i was

01:33:15.100 writing we had no table and chair we had uh put a uh small wood into the wall and i was sitting on a

01:33:24.540 stool and writing my wife sat on the other side of the bed my english was very poor but she had had 1.00

01:33:30.540 english education she was editing and typing uh my manuscript when i didn't have enough work for 0.81

01:33:38.220 her she would pick up her bicycle and go into the village door to door to find out how many kids were

01:33:43.820 there how many were going to school what can we do for those who are not studying etc so she ran into

01:33:51.180 a 10 year old girl lalta and asked her how many brothers and sisters do you have lalta said three maybe

01:33:58.060 four so ruth was curious do you have four or do you have three she said well three fourth is almost

01:34:03.980 dead can i come and see the fourth so lalta took uh ruth in the middle of this is one bedroom hut with 1.00

01:34:12.380 patched roof no light light is sunlight is just coming through the roof and here's this 18 month old

01:34:20.700 girl in the middle of the room on a string cot with no mattress or anything under it 0.99

01:34:28.060 unable to cry flies all over her because puss is oozing out of everywhere including her head 1.00

01:34:36.220 ruth began to cry what's wrong with her the mother smugged oh she doesn't eat anything whatever we 0.90

01:34:42.620 give her she vomits so have you taken her to the hospital how can we take her to the hospital we 1.00

01:34:47.900 don't have any money really i'll give you the money you take her to the hospital no no no i can't go to

01:34:54.060 the hospital i can manage the city well take your husband my husband who will look after the cows the 0.71

01:35:01.420 field ruth said really i'll give you the money to hire a laborer to look after your field for one day 0.99

01:35:09.820 you go with your husband okay i'll also come with you she said to get rid of ruth she said okay i'll

01:35:16.620 talk to my husband when he comes in the evening so ruth came back started urging me that you go and

01:35:23.020 talk to the husband i've done my job i went back they decided they're not going to the hospital

01:35:28.860 why we don't have any money but my wife told you she'll give the money oh we don't want to get into

01:35:34.220 debt no no this is not a debt this is a gift i'll write give it in writing but we don't have the time

01:35:41.340 well my wife's told you that she'll pay for a laborer then they got angry at me why are you bothered

01:35:48.620 it and i couldn't understand well that's a good question that's a good question i i couldn't

01:35:54.460 understand the only rational explanation as far as i'm concerned was that they really wanted to kill

01:36:02.060 the baby is that possible i didn't believe that but i decided to use that to mobilize public opinion 0.99

01:36:11.980 that are you killing this girl why are you so heartless why don't you take a knife stab her 0.80

01:36:19.260 why are you prolonging her misery they were a lot more angry at me i found no support in the village 0.99

01:36:27.660 because i didn't know at that time that female infanticide was a common practice everybody did it if 1.00

01:36:34.540 you had a second or third daughter so um i decided to i pretended that i'm angry i raised my voice

01:36:43.740 that look if you don't take this child to the hospital tomorrow i'm bringing the police here 0.95

01:36:48.940 that you are murdering this baby so one elderly man said to them that look uh you better listen to

01:36:55.660 this guy he's crazy he might actually bring the police and in that case you will have to pay for

01:37:01.100 the hospital expense right now they are offering to pay take it so the girl went a long story which 1.00

01:37:07.980 i discussed in the chapter uh twice the process was repeated she spent two three weeks in the hospital 1.00

01:37:14.780 came to her home recovered the mother will come and fight and ruth would say of course we want you to

01:37:21.020 bring up your child we will pay for the milk you raise your daughter but uh the second time within two 0.99

01:37:29.820 days the child was dead i was convinced that the parents had killed her ruth didn't believe that

01:37:35.900 it was possible for a parent to kill their child uh until we saw three four other kids being killed

01:37:44.540 by their parents because one woman came she saw all of this struggle she had just had twins she wanted us 0.99

01:37:52.300 to take the weaker and the darker kid and we had just had our own baby and ruth said no i'll give you the

01:37:58.940 money i can't take responsibility for a second child and next day the child was dead so we saw instances

01:38:06.620 like that uh and then we realized that it is not self-evident to these people that every child has an

01:38:15.340 inalienable right to life that's our world view and it's not just they're not bad people they're doing what

01:38:24.060 everybody else does a second daughter is a liability uh one daughter is enough to look after the siblings 1.00

01:38:31.020 to cook to clean yeah well one whether they're bad or not is not the issue in some real fundamental

01:38:37.180 sense the issue is whether or not that is bad you know and it's multi-dimensional reality and

01:38:43.740 you can be a relativist and you can say well you know those are the breaks given the socioeconomic

01:38:48.380 conditions but then you have to say well then it's okay for people to kill their daughters it's like

01:38:53.020 well maybe that's not okay like seriously and that's a that's a strange case because you have to come

01:38:58.460 down to one side or the other either it's okay or it isn't those are the only options so so imagine

01:39:04.700 there is no law that you shall not kill your child then it is culture everybody does it 0.99

01:39:12.860 why shouldn't i does the culture decide whether killing an unwanted girl is right or wrong well

01:39:22.860 the nuremberg decision was that the culture doesn't get to decide so right fundamentally that was the 0.97

01:39:29.260 nuremberg decision but the americans had the dominant power at that time to overrule the fascist argument

01:39:37.420 the fascists right ran but but the thing is if you dispense with it you have to dispense with

01:39:43.180 the nuremberg judgment and then what the what the germans did in world war ii was just a matter of

01:39:48.220 culture like these these ideas they have some pretty i know you know this i'm not telling you this obviously

01:39:53.500 you know it but lots of people don't know it okay so we're going to run out of time and i don't want

01:39:58.540 that but i would like to so i'd like to close this properly and i would like in all likelihood to talk

01:40:03.900 to you again especially about your newer projects your work on islam for example i think that would

01:40:08.620 be a great discussion but let's go back to the effect the effect of the biblical revolution in

01:40:14.300 india maybe you could just flesh that out for people and and i know that's a terribly complicated

01:40:19.740 thing to do no no we can do the simple thing from where we began so this one is available dialects

01:40:27.420 are being turned into languages so that every child has an opportunity to study which it had never

01:40:36.460 happened that the son of a shepherd will learn to read write do mathematics son of a fisherman a

01:40:43.660 carpenter this has never happened so uh the nation begins to rise up mughal are ruling delhi for 250 years 0.98

01:40:54.780 they haven't built one hospital for women in delhi the first hospital in delhi is saint stephen's

01:41:03.580 hospital which was born because of a 16 year old english girl priscilla she comes because her brother had

01:41:11.900 been killed in seven uh 1857 uh revolt she comes to bless those who had killed her brother and she sits by the

01:41:23.900 river king yamuna in uh darya ganja in delhi and with its chest of medicines begin to give free medicines to

01:41:34.140 women who have no one so here you have the modal empire for 250 years in delhi has not built one hospital 0.94

01:41:43.580 for women in india for their own women in delhi when a 16 year old girl comes and because jesus said

01:41:52.380 said go and preach the kingdom of god and heal the sick so that compassion which the the upper caste

01:42:02.780 indians just cannot understand because they don't have that compassion they are using medicine to make 1.00

01:42:09.420 money uh there are exceptions but by and large the medicine has become a greed driven business it's not a

01:42:20.700 ministry of compassion uh which it used to be uh so agriculture indian agriculture is transformed william

01:42:29.980 carey himself in 1820 he establishes the first agri-horticultural society in calcutta no such

01:42:39.980 society exists anywhere he's not copying anything from england he's realizing because charles grant has

01:42:46.620 written in 1793 the pathetic state of agriculture in india so beginning with william carey the all the

01:42:54.780 builders of dams and irrigation canals uh sam heganbottom uh i'm i was professor in sam heganbottom

01:43:03.100 university it was an institute when the book was published now it's a university a sam heganbottom

01:43:09.100 university of agriculture technology and sciences finally uh norban burlock the father of green

01:43:16.780 revolution in the revolution yeah the entire transformation of indian agriculture is a fruit

01:43:23.660 of the bible because this is what isaiah has prophesied that uh in the last days the mountain of the

01:43:31.580 lord will be lifted up nations will flock to study god's law they will beat their swords into plowshares 0.94

01:43:40.780 their spears into pruning hooks the instruments of agriculture and horticulture because the bible sees

01:43:49.900 the curse upon the ground the ground will grow thorns and thistles you will have to eat of the sweat of

01:43:57.980 your brow the sin is not something that just takes your soul to hell still results in curse upon the 0.88

01:44:06.460 land agricultural production and yeah and destructive toil which you said right within and one of the

01:44:14.140 things you pointed out was that although there was tremendous respect so there's the sin-like aspect

01:44:22.540 of toil but there's tremendous respect in the biblical corpus for the idea of productive work

01:44:27.340 as opposed to pointless toil and the multiplication of work for the ennoblement of people yes i have that

01:44:35.180 very important chapter on the rise of technology when you refer to the uh the wealth of europe came from

01:44:44.940 a colonial exploitation that nonsense which is talked about the countries such as switzerland which never

01:44:50.940 colonized anyone uh which never colonized anyone uh which never colonized anyone it was itself a colony of sweden

01:44:58.140 for several hundred years and then for russia of several hundred years these nations have blossomed because

01:45:05.100 of the intellectual and transformation including uh the work work ethic etc right so this is what the bible

01:45:15.100 brings brings to india although as the universities have removed the bible indians don't know uh 0.98

01:45:24.540 their own history it's very yeah well welcome to the club yeah it's very embarrassing for a hindu 1.00

01:45:32.300 historian to admit uh that it is simple 16 year old girl who is just obeying christ in compassion

01:45:41.500 that leads to the foundation of the first important first hospital in delhi etc uh but the entire

01:45:50.940 transformation of agriculture medicine education the transformation of languages that we have talked

01:45:57.820 about um and then and then eventually the the political transformation and the emancipation of india

01:46:04.620 free press law legal system that we have four hundred four thousand years of history and prehistory not a single

01:46:13.980 civilization has given us a concept of rule of law equality before law justice for all the creation of civil

01:46:23.500 services though which is called the steel frame of in of india it was sons of the pastors of poor pastors in

01:46:33.100 england they sent their sons to india to build the indian civil services and the police force right

01:46:40.060 well that's part of that and that's part of that strange notion too that that's biblical i think in

01:46:44.940 its essence that to lead is in the truest sense to serve and yes to lead is in the truest sense to serve

01:46:52.620 those who need to be served most and that that's the highest possible ethical calling which is a very strange

01:46:58.780 that's certainly not a brahmin doctrine no the doctrine there the doctrine in any society that has

01:47:04.780 an explicit or implicit caste system and that's pretty much any society i would say that's virtually

01:47:10.700 any society perhaps that doesn't have a biblical orientation is that why in the world would you

01:47:15.740 serve subordinates that's that's that's completely beyond comprehension all that does is demean you

01:47:21.740 yes yes transformation of leadership our first prime minister used to say that i'm prime minister which

01:47:31.180 means that i'm the first servant prime minister minister is a servant now i heard him when i was only 13

01:47:39.020 years old and i knew that he is saying that modern india had a political revolution where kings began to lose

01:47:50.300 their power servants began to increase their power the first servant became the most important office

01:47:57.660 so this revolution began uh the night before good friday when the king of kings the lord of lords

01:48:04.940 got up from the dining table put on the robe of his servant took a basin of water started washing the

01:48:11.740 feet of his disciples and he said that the new kingdom that i have brought is different from the kingdoms

01:48:18.060 of this world their rulers lord it over them but amongst you whoever wants to be the greatest will

01:48:24.700 become the servant so this political revolution came into india but we are losing it political office

01:48:32.700 now means the right to loot uh education now means a university degree is a license to loot that's why our

01:48:42.380 nations are as corrupt as they are because the the all the senior officers uh bankers police officers

01:48:51.660 they're highly educated people but university degree simply means the license to loot if the education is

01:49:00.300 not a transformation of character of making you servant that you are being given this privilege to serve your

01:49:08.860 people be a good neighbor right look i think that's a good place to stop you know that's a nice ending

01:49:17.340 uh obviously there we could talk for hours and i would like to talk to you again as i said particularly

01:49:23.340 about your new work but uh i appreciate this very much i just reiterate for those who are listening

01:49:28.620 um the book i would say that that is perhaps central to the discussion we had today is called is

01:49:35.260 entitled the book that made your world it was published by thomas nelson in 2011 and so it's a tour

01:49:41.180 de force i would say conceptually and historically uh um conceptually because

01:49:49.100 it brings to light in a very interesting way and in a non-western way which is also extremely

01:49:54.300 interesting the truly revolutionary nature of the distribution of the biblical writings it's it's hard

01:50:00.300 to overstate their revolutionary significance and then um in terms of breadth and depth while there's

01:50:06.220 a wealth of historical information that is encapsulated in the book and it's written in a lovely

01:50:11.900 style it was very straightforward read uh despite its dense layering of information and so um i much

01:50:18.140 appreciated it and uh appreciate your conversation with me today and i hope everybody who's listening

01:50:23.420 found it thought-provoking and useful and and uh valuable so let's speak again sure you bet you bet

01:50:30.940 yeah really good to talk to you and and uh thanks for your books a lot thank you for what you're doing

01:50:53.420 you

01:51:00.000 you

01:51:00.020 you

01:51:01.320 you

01:51:02.400 you

01:51:03.820 you

01:51:04.380 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 30, 2022

257. India, Europe & Biblical Revolution ｜ Vishal Mangalwadi

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript