Dr. Vishal Mangalvati is founder and president of the Book of the Millennium International Slash Revelation Movement. He is an Indian philosopher and social reformer, born and raised in India. He's lectured in more than 40 countries and published 17 books, served as the Honorary Professor of Applied Theology in the Gospel and Plough Faculty of Theology at the Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture Technology and Sciences in Al Halabad, India, since 2013, and is the author of The Book That Made Your World and Thomas Nelson's The Grand Experiment. His research, prepared in the process of making a documentary, has been presented in text form and on a variety of electronic and social media platforms. At the turn of the millennium, Vishal and his wife, Ruth, were invited to the U.S. to make a television series exploring the Bible's role in creating the modern world. In this episode, he talks about how he came across the Bible and why he believes it is the centerpiece of his life, and how it shaped his views on the world. He also discusses how the Bible has shaped his life and how he views the world, and the impact it has had on his views of the Bible, as well as how it has shaped the world as a whole, and what it has meant for him and his views about the world and the world at large. He describes how he believes that there is a God who can save you from sin, even if you don t believe in Him. and why you should not have a Bible. The Bible is a good teacher, not a bad teacher or a bad one at all the time it s at least that s a good Christian teacher who can help you become a good student of the Word of God . and that you can learn from the Bible s teaching not only about God s Word, but also from it s teaching you so you can be a good sinner, not just from God s word but from it in that you can become a better sinner a better Christian of God s . He s a better student is a better teacher, a better human being because he s better than Jesus , and he s good enough better than any other than you could be if you are a good enough teacher, and he s not a sinner.
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00:00:57.000Hello everyone. I am pleased to have with me today Dr. Vishal Mangalvati.
00:01:18.000Born in 1949, Dr. Mangalvati is founder-president of the Book of the Millennium International slash Revelation movement.
00:01:28.000He's an Indian philosopher and social reformer, born and raised in India.
00:01:33.000Vishal studied philosophy at the University of Allelabad, 1967 to 1969, and Indore, 1971 to 73,
00:01:41.000in Hindu ashrams and at the Labrie Fellowship in Switzerland in 1976.
00:01:47.000Along with his wife, Ruth, he founded a community to serve the rural poor in India.
00:01:53.000Vishal continued his direct involvement in community transformation until 1997,
00:01:59.000including service at the headquarters of two national political parties.
00:02:03.000There, he worked toward the empowerment and liberation of Indian peasants and the lower castes.
00:02:09.000In 1977, Asia's then-largest publisher, Vikas Publishing House, published his first book, The World of Gurus.
00:02:18.000His next two books, When the New Age Gets Old, IVP, 1992, and India, The Grand Experiment, HIPAA-RAN, 1997,
00:02:27.000brought his work to the attention of American and European readers.
00:02:31.000At the turn of the millennium, Vishal and his wife, Ruth, were invited to the U.S. to make a television series
00:02:37.000exploring the Bible's role in creating the modern world.
00:02:41.000Their research, prepared in the process of making a documentary film,
00:02:48.000has been presented in text form and on a variety of electronic and social media platforms.
00:02:53.000He's lectured in more than 40 countries and published 17 books,
00:02:57.000served as the Honorary Professor of Applied Theology in the Gospel and Plough Faculty of Theology,
00:03:03.000the Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture Technology and Sciences in Al-Halabad, India, since 2013.
00:03:11.000I recently read two of his newer books, The Book That Made Your World and Thomas Nelson, 2011.
00:03:23.000And in what is some ways a companion volume and an extension, this book changed everything.
00:04:00.000So ignorant when it comes to history that it's embarrassing.
00:04:03.000So 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.
00:04:10.000I thought we could have a pretty interesting conversation on the, well, on the history of India,
00:04:16.000on the role the Bible played in shaping India as a modern country, on your views of the Bible and the West, all of that.
00:04:29.000Well, it's a pleasure to have you here.
00:04:31.000So 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.
00:04:42.000While 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.
00:05:00.000My, I had become a Christian as a teenager because I was going through a moral struggle.
00:05:08.000I was addicted to shoplifting and lying.
00:05:12.000And I hated myself for this habit of lying when there was nothing to be gained from lying.
00:05:19.000And I would meditate and try and control my tongue.
00:05:23.000But in the evening, when I look back on the day, I have just deceived everybody that was habit.
00:05:30.000And I will try and have more willpower to control myself until someone explained to me that your problem is not will, lack of willpower.
00:06:19.000I was still a teenager struggling with this moral struggle.
00:06:23.000Why 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?
00:06:34.000Well, that is actually a very good question, because I had already realized that my attempt to control my tongue.
00:06:59.000And 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.
00:07:57.000I began reviewing my course, reviewing all the notes, all the books.
00:08:04.000And 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.
00:08:16.000By 1969, philosophy departments in India already knew that the enlightenment failed.
00:08:26.000Nobody in any university believed that I know the truth and I can teach the truth.
00:08:32.000So I began to feel that perhaps the Buddha was right.
00:08:37.000I 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.
00:08:50.000We all have some truth, but that is relative truth relative to our experience of the elephant.
00:09:04.000So I thought that perhaps the Buddha was right.
00:09:07.000And 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.
00:09:15.000But 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?
00:09:35.000So obviously the concept of blindness exists because there is someone who is not blind.
00:09:43.000So the sight must exist for the concept of blindness to exist.
00:09:48.000So I decided, is there someone who knows the truth?
00:09:53.000So this started on my quest, the philosophical quest to see.
00:09:59.000I 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.
00:10:14.000revelation and I was amazed that the my professors of course had been taught teaching us the
00:10:21.900philosophy of the Vedas but they never brought a copy of the Vedas into the classroom and I had
00:10:29.120never seen a copy of the Vedas so I went to buy one and I was told that sorry the Vedas are not
00:10:36.500printed they cannot be translated I was surprised to learn that actually Sanskrit never had a script
00:10:43.060because it was oral language so it's sophisticated a grammar but no script so the Vedas were not
00:10:52.440supposed to be written down they were to be memorized but and memorizing was not enough you
00:10:59.380needed correct enunciation and pronunciation and intonation and when to offer the melted butter
00:11:07.500into the fire etc the rituals that was the purpose so Vedas were never written to know the truth
00:11:14.120and in fact the Upanishad which followed the Vedas Mundaka Upanishad for example which from which our
00:11:24.660national motto comes which is Satya Mev Jayate truth alone triumphs the Upanishad says
00:11:31.880that no amount of study of the Vedas will ever lead you to truth because the Vedas are not written to
00:11:39.640give you knowledge or wisdom of truth they are magical sounds composed to give you power so I said well
00:11:48.660it'll be very nice to have some power but right now I'm looking for truth so I went to the Muslim
00:11:56.260books because I was in a city called Allahabad which is a Persian name abode of Allah this city was
00:12:03.780established by Muslims just two years ago its name was changed to a Hindu name but at that time it was
00:12:10.720still seen as a Muslim city and I was surprised that the Quran was not available neither in my mother tongue which
00:12:18.760is India's national language Hindi or Urdu which was the language of my town which is the national
00:12:26.520language of Pakistan right now so the Quran was not available the shopkeepers explained to me that you
00:12:35.700have to study Arab to study Quran so I said well it'll be very nice to know a foreign language but at this
00:12:46.500moment I'm not interested in studying a language if the Quran is God's word why is it not available
00:12:52.440to me in my language so it was my older sister who encouraged me to read the Bible and I said to
00:12:58.820her that I've already read the Bible I think these are childish stories this is it she said no no you were
00:13:05.420a child when you read it now you think you are a philosopher so read it as a critical philosopher
00:13:11.840and as I began rereading the Bible I found Genesis very exciting because it was answering questions
00:13:19.620that university had not answered about who who am I what is man yeah well in your in your book one of
00:13:26.640the things you do quite nicely a couple of comments and what you've said I mean you make a quite a
00:13:33.600remarkable and insightful case I would say for the particulars of the vision of man that's embedded in
00:13:41.160Genesis and I found that interesting it your ideas in some sense paralleled ideas I was developing in
00:13:46.800a course or a lecture series I did in the Bible that God contends with chaos to make order and that
00:13:53.220man and women are made man and woman are made in the in that image and there's a imputed nobility to
00:14:02.660the human character that's part and parcel of the initial Genesis story you also make a case that
00:14:07.920and you were beginning to develop that just now again that um the universal translation of the
00:14:14.660Bible has had a revolutionary worldwide effect on every culture really that it's touched and that
00:14:19.740that effect of the book itself not necessarily the people who transmitted the book but sometimes them
00:14:24.720too that that effect was fundamentally positive that it led to uh an increased appreciation for the
00:14:31.420dignity and worth and nobility of of men and women alike regardless of their economic status or
00:14:37.780background that's absolutely right and we are in the same wavelength at that point uh but uh later as I
00:14:46.560kept reading up to say books like Leviticus I found the Bible very poor very boring book but when I came into
00:14:54.500the uh historical books of Kings and Chronicles then I was really fed up here I am an Indian young man
00:15:03.540I do not know enough about Indian history why am I reading this Jewish book um and as I was ready to close
00:15:12.480down the Bible once and for all the uh something amazing happened which was that uh Indian history
00:15:23.000at school level is always telling us how good great glorious wonderful our ancestors and our rulers was
00:15:31.860this Jewish book this Jewish book in Kings and Chronicles was telling me how rotten the Jewish kings were
00:15:37.700so I realized of course this is not court history kings didn't pay historians to write about their
00:15:44.560fathers so this must be religious history of the Jews which is critical of the politicians because in India
00:15:51.540the religious leaders are Brahmins politicians are Chhatriyas there's always rivalry between them
00:15:58.520so I said this must be a religious book so just to confirm my opinion of what the Bible is I began
00:16:06.120rereading these historical books and I was amazed that the book is condemning Jewish religious leaders
00:16:14.220to the point that God hated them he destroyed his temple he killed the priests he sent them into slavery
00:16:22.260so I said okay then the Bible must be subaltern history written from the point of view of simple
00:16:30.180uh Jewish people men and women and children who uh are exploited both by religious and political leaders
00:16:39.860but then uh as I began rereading these books I realized no uh this book is incredible
00:16:52.720it is more anti-semitic than anything Hitler could have written it is saying that every Jew
00:16:59.640was an idolater adulterer liar cheater deceiver etc god hated the people he destroyed his chosen people
00:17:08.860send them into slavery to Syria and Babylon so then I said well this must be the point of view of the
00:17:16.220prophets because prophets love to condemn everybody uh that's people would accuse you and me of being
00:17:23.980that kind of uh voice so here I already know that these are very boring books and within a period of two
00:17:32.300I'm looking through Samuel Kings and Chronicles for the fifth time to just confirm my point of view
00:17:39.180that this is the word of prophets uh but then I was amazed that the book is saying most of the prophets
00:17:47.160were false prophets the good ones were the losers they were trying to save their nation they couldn't
00:17:54.100save themselves they were beaten killed thrown into cisterns etc right so you're making the case that it's not
00:18:01.960easy to read those books as the expression of any given dominant group or power or or exploitative group
00:18:09.780or even viewpoint other than other than what other than an attempt to lay out some some fundamental
00:18:15.700ethical truth well it was a widow in um the north of Israel uh Sidonian widow who opened my eyes
00:18:26.720Elijah Elijah is running away from his own king the king says you are a troubler of Israel because of you
00:18:35.400there is three years of famine he was hiding in a brook uh drinking water from there the Bible says the
00:18:42.620crows were bringing his food the the brook dried out so he was sent to this widow of Zarephath and uh Elijah
00:18:53.680says please can you bring me some water and she goes you know he's been on a long journey he shouts at her
00:19:00.480please also bring me a loaf of bread she says now that's going too far I have just a little bit of
00:19:06.240flour 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
00:19:15.360die make a loaf of me besides yourself and your son she does so she invites him to stay because she
00:19:25.220realizes that she actually had more flour than she thought next morning she still has flour and oil
00:19:31.820and next evening and the third day and the fourth day and she begins to feel this guy is a magician
00:19:36.880he's multiplying by a limited flock and she's very pleased to have him as the house guest but then
00:19:45.400her son becomes sick and dies and she's really angry at Elijah that I'm a sinner did you as a man of God
00:19:53.640come here to judge me I have nothing I have no husband I have no jewelry I have no pots and pans
00:20:00.560I have no savings no insurance this boy was my only hope and now he is dead uh because of you so Elijah
00:20:09.060takes her him the boy up prays for him the and ask God that my whole nation condemns me as a troubler
00:20:17.300of Israel now you have brought trouble upon this woman also so the boy is resurrected the woman when he
00:20:26.140brings the son back the woman says now I know that you are a man of God and the words of the Lord
00:20:33.980from your mouth are true now my professors have no concept of truth can the words communicate truth
00:20:42.040the Buddha doesn't believe openers don't believe that human words can communicate truth but a widow
00:20:48.500knows that you're a man of God the word of the Lord from your mouth is truth so I began to
00:20:55.680look into these old uh historical books and I realized that whatever my interpretation
00:21:02.220the book itself is claiming to be God's word yeah well one of the things that you do a nice job of I
00:21:08.580would say in contrast to maybe maybe post-modern perspectives in particular is to make the case that
00:21:16.720the biblical narrative um is predicated on the idea that there is a truth that words can aspire to
00:21:25.540and words can contain that truth and that human beings can possess those words so the words can
00:21:32.100refer to something that's real and absolute and fundamentally true and we're graced in some sense
00:21:37.860by the ability to partake in that process and that words have a world engendering force as well
00:21:43.940and so I thought that defense of of the biblical perspective was extremely is extremely what would you
00:21:51.820say necessary and welcome in today's world because as you point out it isn't the conclusion of modern
00:22:00.420philosophers especially of the more radical type that words refer to anything at all outside of
00:22:05.280themselves or that words can contain anything reasonably approximating some kind of transcendent truth
00:22:12.800yes that's what I learned studying Wittgenstein uh Burton Russell said that Wittgenstein was the
00:22:19.600greatest British philosopher of the first part of the 20th century and his philosophy of linguistic
00:22:25.800analysis he begins with assuming that the words have something to do with truth some words can
00:22:31.940communicate truth but by the time he's done he has come to realize uh that words uh have nothing to do
00:22:40.320with truth the words lead to words and more words and more words so after that the western
00:22:46.600enlightenment philosophy becomes anti-philosophy it's not a pursuit of truth uh but it's a pursuit of um
00:22:54.740myth-making uh story uh making uh but so so you have existentialism etc taking off from from um failure of the
00:23:10.040enlightenment because that raises the question where does language come from so if you take an atheistic
00:23:17.980position that we were all primates in the jungles of Sudan and Ethiopia and uh we we were fighting
00:23:26.460uh with each other over mating and food then the language evolved uh because uh this is my parable that um
00:23:36.400a uh an ape a female ape has her child they're all the whole gang is resting on the trees so in the
00:23:45.620morning she gets up and there is one male uh he gets up he's leaving so she asks him where are you going
00:23:52.240because they don't use words and he says that well yesterday I saw some very pretty females going towards
00:23:58.540Ethiopia that's where I'm going she said you're not going anywhere you stay here look after my baby
00:24:04.660I'm hungry my baby is hungry I'm going to eat find some food for myself and there are pythons here
00:24:11.820they'll eat up my baby unless you sit and watch over my baby uh if you don't I'll break your head
00:24:18.840so uh in these fights of uh apes or primates fighting over food mating rights uh the language sounds
00:24:30.000animal sounds become uh words language language develops if that's the origin of language then
00:24:38.180the postmodern philosophy is right that words can have nothing to do with truth this is where
00:24:43.960Upanishads and Buddhism had reached that in order to know the truth you have to empty your mind
00:24:49.900in meditation you have to know they didn't go the way Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell went because
00:24:58.160uh Buddha is already critiquing like Socrates he's already critiquing the myths that the religious myths
00:25:06.400that Hindus have created or the Greeks have created these myths are meant not to find meaning of life and
00:25:14.180truth these myths are meant by religious leaders to exploit the ordinary people so uh so the Buddha has
00:25:23.660and Socrates has very little use for the myths uh unlike Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell uh because they
00:25:31.640already know that people are enslaved by myths so a lot of the New Testament is critical of stories
00:25:38.960critical of myths although at the moment the Western mind has been taken over by the idea that we cannot
00:25:47.060know the truth but we can invent stories that know the truth so I I began to realize that uh if there are
00:25:56.420five blind men there could be a sixth man who is not blind can he speak is revelation possible and as I'm
00:26:06.440reading the the old testament uh particularly the boring books of the old testament I began to realize
00:26:13.820that the book is claiming to be God's word and there are umpteen prophecies within kings and chronicles
00:26:21.740that are fulfilled during the lifetime of the that period of the kings themselves so uh I began to take
00:26:29.780the concept of revelation seriously because also it it also explained the origin of language much better
00:26:36.720than the evolutionist did how language evolved okay so you view in in your book um particularly in uh let's see
00:26:48.700in the book that made your world you present a viewpoint that's pretty positively predisposed to
00:26:59.760science and technology and the enlightenment at least the early periods of the enlightenment but you
00:27:05.020see them as inextricably inextricably inextricably rooted in a biblical underlay and that as they
00:27:15.080became more and more divorced from that biblical underlay the more post-modern deviations from the
00:27:21.460enlightenment pathway or from the productive enlightenment pathway manifested themselves and you also make the
00:27:27.420case that while in india for example which which I found very interesting that the the distribution
00:27:33.060of the bible in the native languages of the land had a revolutionary effect and that that effect was also
00:27:40.160manifested in a broad sense in the west uh against the catholic church and against well everything that
00:27:46.680and against arbitrary political power political and economic power
00:27:51.220that's correct the in scottish enlightenment there was no atheist in american enlightenment there were no atheists
00:28:02.780in british english enlightenment only thomas hobbes was the atheist it was only when you come to the french
00:28:10.780enlightenment that you have atheists uh and the can end result of uh french enlightenment was disaster
00:28:19.420uh our universities were telling us the department of politics etc were telling us that our freedoms come
00:28:27.320from russo voltaire french uh revolution but they were also telling us that within three years of the
00:28:33.480start of the french revolution the revolution is themselves described their rule as a reign of terror
00:28:39.880and within 10 years the whole revolution ended with the dictatorship of napoleon bonaparte so uh the i began to
00:28:48.760realize that our professors were not either they didn't know the truth that they had been deceived by
00:28:54.360american universities uh like ancient philosophy political philosophy begins with plato republic plato
00:29:02.820so the professors are saying the democracy came from greek city states but they are also telling me
00:29:09.280that plato says the democracy is the worst of all political systems he hated democracy because it was
00:29:16.060athenian democracy that killed socrates in order to defend the myths so uh professors clearly don't know
00:29:25.200how we got democracy etc so yes as i looked at the enlightenment and it was of course later david
00:29:34.000press his book from plato to nato uh that helped me understand why american universities had deceived
00:29:41.520themselves and a whole century of uh young people believing that the freedoms came from greece
00:29:50.200the only thing greece ever exported from the enlightenment for that matter but but if the
00:29:55.420enlightenment's rooted in biblical ideas i mean what i another thing i found particularly interesting
00:30:01.300about your book is your insistence and i i believe this to be the case that the idea of natural right
00:30:08.260is embedded in a biblical conception of the sovereignty of the individual and divine worth
00:30:13.560of the individual and i i think that case is pretty clear historically in relationship to the american
00:30:19.080declaration of independence but i also think it's clear and you do a lovely job of developing this
00:30:24.180it's clear that the roots of that idea were essentially biblical the the the both derived both from
00:30:33.220the old testament and from the new testament particularly genesis and the gospels
00:30:38.260uh that's correct so going back to those very boring historical books in the bible uh here is uh
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00:41:21.740yeah well you know i talk to my audiences across the united states and say well it seems obvious to me
00:41:29.820which doesn't mean it's true that societies that societies that are desirable are free societies and
00:41:38.300free societies are predicated on rule of law the law independent of the and transcendent in relationship
00:41:45.660to the rulers and on a conception of man that gives every individual an intrinsic dignity that basically
00:41:54.140has a religious substructure and that to the degree that we are citizens of those lands and we believe
00:42:01.260in the principles by which they operate then we we're bound to accept that view because without accepting
00:42:09.180that view the whole system makes no sense like the foundation stone is pulled out from underneath it
00:42:14.860and that's that's quite the conundrum you know that there's a biblical vision underpinning the states that
00:42:22.540are the most productive now the radical types the leftists in particular say well the reason that
00:42:28.460the west is um wealthy and free is because it was built on the backs of the poor and in in in the west and
00:42:38.860also in the third world but one of the reasons i found your book so interesting is that you're not so
00:42:44.060fond of that viewpoint you look at india for example and as far as i could tell you believe that the
00:42:50.540distribution of the biblical narrative in india has clearly been a net positive and so maybe you
00:42:57.420could outline a little bit of indian history because i think people would find that very
00:43:00.940interesting the british came in india was fragmented into hundreds of cities or states small states ruled
00:43:07.820over in many cases by muslims that was the scene when the british arrived and the british had their
00:43:13.420problems but the but the in but the introduction of the biblical narrative into india in your estimation
00:43:20.940had a positively transformative effect much like it had in in western europe uh that's true thank you
00:43:27.980you you're doing a wonderful job in uh arguing the case that you just outlined and i hope that many
00:43:35.020people in the west and in the east will listen to you uh because uh well we don't believe it anymore
00:43:40.940eh that's the thing but it's also partly it's because we're so damn ignorant eh i mean i was
00:43:45.980struck by reading in reading your book how much i didn't know you know for example and this is very
00:43:51.500embarrassing to relate i didn't realize i knew india was fragmented before it was unified into a
00:43:56.780modern nation state but i didn't know it was fragmented and fundamentally ruled in many cases by
00:44:01.820the muslim empire then i just didn't know that and that's pathetic that i didn't know that and i also
00:44:07.500your book also helped me understand see in the west now we tend to think of the entire christian
00:44:15.660tradition as oppressive in the catholic sense and i'm not criticizing the catholics by the way
00:44:22.540that it was a mono a monopolistic belief system that was fundamentally oppressive now your book helped
00:44:30.380me understand to what degree that oppression if it existed was a remnant of the roman empire and
00:44:36.620the empire world view and that it was the introduction of the bible and its distribution
00:44:42.300in all the vernaculars that actually blew the remaining empire part of christianity into fragments
00:44:49.180and in and then in a very positive way and that's an analogous as i said to the effect of
00:44:55.500the christian or the the biblical narrative on india which yep so please please go ahead with the indian
00:45:03.740story that's true in the year 1000 is when from afghanistan through khyber path uh khyber pass um
00:45:13.020mahmoud kazni the an invader began to invade india and attack so between 1000 1031 he came about
00:45:23.82016 17 times looting primarily temples religious temples because that's where the wealth was the
00:45:31.740the kings will store the wealth in the temples uh and he would loot the temple uh there was a very
00:45:38.060small uh khyber pass only one place from where invaders could come from afghanistan uh and parashia etc
00:45:47.580india could have built a small wall of india we didn't need a great wall of india to keep the invaders
00:45:53.660out but the indian rulers never built this small wall to the point that 100 almost 200 years later
00:46:03.1001191 uh muhammad gauri comes from afghanistan all the way to delhi almost a thousand kilometers uh and
00:46:13.100he fights with the hindu king of delhi he loses goes back 1192 he comes back defeats prithvirachahan kills him
00:46:22.780and uh delhi is taken over by muslims in 1192 so what has weakened and the hindu kingdoms from
00:46:34.5401000 to 1192 almost 200 to 200 years is a religious ritual called the horse sacrifice
00:46:43.500ashwamed yagya hindu kings are sending a horse and behind the horse are a few hundred young men
00:46:52.780they're going into a village either village becomes their property and begins to pay tribute to their
00:46:58.220king or there is they have to fight a war so the at that time delhi is small a bigger kingdom is kandaj
00:47:07.260the two hindu kings are sons of real sisters so their first cousins one of the kings of kandajan he
00:47:17.820starts this ashwamedyag horse sacrifice but his brother who is smaller kingdom but more competent ruler he
00:47:27.820refuses to accept the sovereignty of his cousin so hatred develops between two cousins who are
00:47:36.700governing two important kingdoms in north india so after in 1192 when the muslim invader has been
00:47:45.340defeated by the king of delhi the king of kandajan he invites the muslim invader to please come back
00:47:53.500kill my brother and that's how delhi is taken over by muslims and then muslims different dynasties
00:48:01.180different uh uh kinds of muslims rule india until it ruled delhi until 1858 so how much and how much
00:48:11.820to what degree were they ruling over the rest of what was india as well at during that period of
00:48:17.180time it was expanding and contracting the mughal empire for about uh 200 years or so was the most
00:48:24.540expansive but so the british had begun to come during the uh mughal empire uh but only to trade with
00:48:33.980permission the french came the done and what was the consequence of the mughal empire well in in
00:48:39.980relationship to the to the typical indians life and and to the structure of the state they build the
00:48:45.180taj mahal but they didn't build wheelbarrows for the laborers who were carrying bricks and stones
00:48:54.540so you build pyramids you build taj mahal you build palaces this is the whole middle middle ages but
00:49:00.620you don't care for the wheelbarrows so even today women are carrying bricks and stones and mud and
00:49:08.780cement on their head as they're building four-story halls because you don't care for the poor so india was
00:49:16.780weakened by what a religious ritual uh ashwamedya which was supposed to be
00:49:23.500a king very strong so kings did become strong nation became weak and divided which allowed
00:49:30.620muslim rulers and then french and british and others to come and take over so uh india for a thousand
00:49:38.460years almost um eight nine hundred years was slave now there were pockets of hindu kingdoms but some of
00:49:47.100those hindu kingdoms were worse even compared to the muslim ruler like south india uh travencore
00:49:56.620right and these and these all these rulers hindu and muslim alike existed in a completely exploitative
00:50:01.660relationship in relationship to their subjects there was no conception of of individual worth as
00:50:07.660you point out there was no conception that the life of a slave let alone a female slave let's say
00:50:13.660or even a female period for that matter had any real intrinsic value that unfortunately is correct
00:50:20.620let me give you a very shameful example of what this means so in south india in what is now
00:50:27.500trivandrum travencore no lower caste woman was allowed to cover her top
00:50:37.340uh if she covered her top she has to prepare breast tax which depends on the size of her breast
00:50:45.020um now even the upper caste women in travencore this is kerala south india they when they go into
00:50:56.060the temple they have to remove their upper cloth because you're honoring the priests you have to be
00:51:02.460bare-chested on the street if a a noble uh someone from noble family royalty is passing through on the
00:51:10.860street the upper caste women have to take their cloth off and throw petals flower petals this is
00:51:19.340hindu india while the british are ruling in india so this these parts of history are suppressed
00:51:26.940because they are shameful and obviously they are shameful that there is more slavery in the hindu
00:51:33.580kingdom of travencore in south india than in the muslim uh kingdom in the north so
00:51:41.180so this is partly because of caste system so the horse sacrifice was one thing that had weakened india
00:51:49.580caste system had weakened india because if the kings are exploiting my wealth and putting that wealth
00:51:57.900in gold uh and silver and diamonds in the temples when an invader comes and attacks the king why should i
00:52:06.620sacrifice my life why should i fight and defend my kingdom because i have no stake in this kingdom
00:52:13.820you are treating me as untouchable and this is what is happening in india today every day that uh the
00:52:21.180lower caste people who are trying to recover their dignity that the hindu religious system has made me
00:52:28.380lower than animals jesus christ is making me a human being a child of god you won't allow me to enter your
00:52:36.060temple jesus is making me a priest of the most high god so if they want to convert there's persecution
00:52:43.900happening every day in india and the supreme okay so now you also made the case that in the caste system
00:52:50.700for example that i thought this was very interesting and quite damning from a modern perspective or maybe
00:52:55.980from a biblical perspective not so much a modern that there was no sense in the hindu caste structure
00:53:04.380that the poor and downtrodden and let's say the untouchables were to be revered or served or regarded
00:53:11.260as intrinsically noble partly because the doctrine of karma was predicated on the assumption a that they
00:53:18.780deserved their suffering had earned it in some cosmic sense and b that if you did even attempt to alleviate
00:53:25.180their suffering all you did all you were doing cosmically was prolonging it because the suffering
00:53:30.540that they had garnered as a consequence of karma was deserved and was going to be played out no
00:53:35.580matter who interfered with it and so there wasn't just an absence of care let's say in some sense
00:53:41.900for the downtrodden and the outcast but there was an insistence that they deserved their position
00:53:47.980and that anything that might be done to help them would actually be counterproductive now have i got that
00:53:53.180right yes uh except i'll take a little farther that is that inequality is self-evident truth
00:54:03.740including in america that men and women are equal was never self-evident to americans whites and black
00:54:10.940slaves are equal was never self-evident to jeffersons and washington's and the american founding fathers
00:54:17.900equality is not a self-evident truth inequality yeah quite the contrary right you could say that
00:54:25.420that equality is so non-self-evident that it would take the divine fiat to make it a reality exactly
00:54:32.540so yeah i know that's a powerful argument and jefferson knew that therefore in the declaration of
00:54:39.020independence he wrote we hold these truths to be sacred that all men are created well it was benjamin
00:54:46.300franklin who put pressure on him and he was trying to please thomas pain the deist the rationalist
00:54:53.660the plural we can't say that this truth is revealed to us by sacred writings so right say we hold these
00:55:00.700truths to be self-evident well i think it was it might be fair to say that those truths are self-evident
00:55:06.780in a culture that's absolutely saturated by protestant biblical presumptions but they're not
00:55:12.460self-evident otherwise yeah they were not self-evident 500 years ago when martin luther discovered
00:55:18.860priesthood and kingship of fallen believers because at that time if a christian went to the church in
00:55:24.780germany average christian only got the bread symbol of christ's body not the wine the symbol of blood the
00:55:33.580uh blood was only for the priests so the the division between priests and laity resulted in war
00:55:43.260because if all men are created equal if every child of god is supposed to serve god as his priest
00:55:50.220manage his kingdom as a king then uh this was a revolution a theological revolution so yes and it was
00:55:59.260resisted that was part of the reason i suppose that the translation of the bible was resisted by so
00:56:04.700many people in the hierarchical church because people knew they knew full well that if the actual
00:56:10.780words were distributed widely that that would create a bottom-up revolution as people realized
00:56:16.860their fundamental not only their equality but more than that their equality before god and
00:56:22.540their fundamental worth and their capability of having a relationship with truth and there is maybe no
00:56:28.220more revolutionary doctrine than that you know it hit home for me how revolutionary the book is
00:56:33.820and even even in western history that's absolutely true so uh that doctrine of human equality the first
00:56:42.460thing it does in germany 1524 1525 is the peasants war uh i'll come back to that but yeah before that before
00:56:52.860luther translates the bible into german you have wickliff in oxford who is translating the bible into
00:56:59.420english along with his friends uh this is before printing existed before gutenberg and it wasn't
00:57:06.060wickliff killed for his trouble was he was he burned fortunately not after he had been buried his bones were dug
00:57:14.780out bones oh yes his bones were burned and the ashes were scattered but he didn't die
00:57:22.460because part of his time there were two popes or three and for a while there were three popes
00:57:27.500fighting with each other each of them wanted british support and wickliff had become a hero in britain
00:57:34.940because uh over taxation so the british was so he escaped that doom but they got tyndall i believe
00:57:41.580yeah if i remember correctly yes tyndall was burned uh but tyndall is 150 or so years after wickliff
00:57:48.780uh but so well so that's that's even that's interesting even that that the resistance to the
00:57:53.420translation lasted multiple centuries it wasn't a flash in the pan it was an extremely dangerous act
00:57:59.660to translate the bible into a vernacular language and you've got to ask yourself why
00:58:04.220you're absolutely right because it was bishop arundale the archbishop of uh canterbury who uh banned
00:58:16.780wickliff's bible and prohibited that no one is allowed to translate the bible into english without
00:58:24.940permission so tyndall spent a whole year knocking at the doors of three bishops trying to get permission
00:58:32.060to translate the bible into english all three of them refused so he uh became a refugee he uh which
00:58:39.660was also illegal to leave england without permission he left england went to wittenberg under luther
00:58:46.300began to translate the bible the new testament then he came to belgium that's where he printed it
00:58:52.060to smuggle it into england so anyone who was found 100 years earlier with a page of wickliff's
00:59:01.020bible hand copied uh he could be burned at stake because the church has banned translation of the
00:59:10.060bible so the bible was an explosive revolutionary book okay okay so let's let's go back to india then so
00:59:17.980now you have the muslim ruling the muslims ruling india and you have the hindu gods or the hindu kings
00:59:24.060ruling india and it's a a caste structured society and there's no shortage of oppression and there's
00:59:30.380no real development at the individual level and the british start a mercantile relationship and then
00:59:36.060the biblical corpus and enters the indian landscape through the operation fundamentally of the british but
00:59:41.660of missionaries not the mercantilists per se yes although a fair number of the christian
00:59:47.340influenced british politicians were all already pushing favorably for india india's independent
00:59:54.140development several hundred years ago way before it actually happened yes now a few missionaries
01:00:00.300from europe had come to south india before the british missionary movement got going and they had
01:00:07.660begun to translate the bible into some of the south indian languages etc but this was small private
01:00:14.460initiative the missionary movement per se got started only in 1793 when william carey a cobbler
01:00:23.020in england he was a baptist so he was not allowed to go into oxford or cambridge these were anglican
01:00:28.460universities so he taught himself on while working as a cobbler latin greek hebrew geography politics
01:00:36.700mission maybe history etc and he wrote a book a small book inquiring whether the contemporary church
01:00:46.940is under an obligation to go and evangelize the world disciple all nations or was that a command
01:00:53.980given only for the first generation of apostles so his book and inquiry into obligation of the christians
01:01:02.300to disciple all nations it's it's a very long title that's what begins the modern missionary movement
01:01:09.660but ironically uh 1793 when his book is published is the year when the british parliament banned
01:01:19.180missionaries from going to india so the east india british east india company is governing
01:01:27.420bengal which includes bangladesh asam etc that's a large part of eastern india but missionaries are
01:01:35.820not allowed because evangelical movement is already creating problem for africa the british rule in africa
01:01:45.100because british companies are bringing african slaves in british ships selling them in caribbeans and
01:01:52.220south america north america and evangelical conscience which believes that all human beings
01:01:58.380are equal therefore slavery is immoral they are creating problems and it is the members of house of
01:02:05.980lord in england who have stake in these companies they don't want missionaries to go we're having a
01:02:12.860good time in africa and india we're making a lot of money we don't want morality injected into business
01:02:19.820um right but it does get injected wilberforce manages it unbelievably well and you know one of the
01:02:26.140things that i've really been struck by lately is this um this this post-modern and radical leftist insistence
01:02:37.260that exploitation is wrong i think well why do you think exploitation is wrong you have to buy the doctrine
01:02:45.020of the inalienable rights of the individual and the natural rights of the individual and the divine
01:02:50.860worth of the individual before slavery is wrong and you don't buy any of that but if you do but if you
01:02:57.020do buy it you end up like wilbur like wilberforce and you put yourself on the line to what to cost cost
01:03:05.260england a tremendous fortune over a multiple decades to eradicate slavery around the world because of its
01:03:11.340moral inappropriateness because of the sacred nature of each individual that's absolutely right that
01:03:18.700if 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
01:03:29.420girls keep them locked and sell them is a girl different than an animal does she have yeah and if power is the
01:03:38.140if power is the only force that is real and the only force that's credible then obviously you can
01:03:45.340buy and sell if you have the power to do it you can only not do that in some fundamental sense if there's
01:03:51.100a transcendent order let's say that that can use each individual with fundamental worth the inalienable
01:03:57.500right to liberty that a woman cannot be kept in cage because she is made in god's image who is free
01:04:06.140yeah so this well i've been thinking i've been thinking about that practically too you know so
01:04:10.860think imagine it this way so the reason that you have the right to liberty is so that you let's say
01:04:19.420you have the right to conscience and you have the right to conscience so that you can make
01:04:23.180appropriate ethical decisions and states depend on ethical individuals to make appropriate
01:04:29.420ethical decisions to keep the states from crumbling which is basically the stories that go
01:04:34.380throughout the old testament is that when all the individuals who make up a state become enslaved
01:04:39.260or become so corrupt that they no longer make appropriate decisions the entire state is doomed
01:04:44.700and everybody collapses into slavery and so you have you have your freedom you have your liberty not so that
01:04:51.740you can do whatever you want but so that you can exercise your conscience in relationship to your
01:04:56.220well let's say divine calling that's absolutely right the idea of conscience is foundational to
01:05:04.700whole of western political philosophy that the reality is that in human body there is no organ called
01:05:12.300conscience conscience is an aspect of human soul the spiritual dimension of a human being where my conscience
01:05:22.940judges judges me that you're lying that you're shoplifting you are a thief you're a liar you're a sinner
01:05:29.660so conscience is um the image of god in me which can be corrupted right but can be reformed so this this is of
01:05:39.900course the fundamental source of liberty when uh 1521 22 uh martin luther is standing in the diet of worms
01:05:49.900the emperor has called for luther to be tried because the roman empire cannot be divided when
01:05:58.700the turks are attacking it he wants unity so he wants luther to explain himself and he says okay these
01:06:05.100are your books yes sir and these are the books of the church fathers yes sir your books contradict
01:06:11.820the books that the church fathers have written for a long time yes sir they do so will you recant
01:06:17.740he's not given an opportunity to defend himself because you are contradicting what the church fathers
01:06:24.300have said you should recant otherwise you are a heretic that means that any christian can kill you
01:06:31.820and will go to heaven so luther takes 24 hours and that happened just uh two three weeks ago the 500th
01:06:39.740anniversary of the diet of worms when luther spends a whole night in prayer that do i recant save my life
01:06:48.860or do i remain true to my conscience so he makes that classic statement uh that uh i it's not safe it's not
01:06:59.820right to go against one's conscience i will recant i'm not being proud and arrogant i will recant if you
01:07:07.260convince me from scriptures and claim reason if not i'm sorry i can't repent so help me god that's
01:07:16.300here i stand here i stand so help me god now that doctrine of conscience it comes from paul uses the
01:07:24.940word repeatedly in uh his epistles such as timothy and titus that this is the true religion not all the
01:07:32.700rituals not all the sacraments but to keep your heart clean pure right it's the prophetic voice
01:07:39.500within essentially yes so that then is debated and um milton john milton the puritan poet uses it in his
01:07:51.500argument for aria pagitica in aria pagitica when he argues for liberty to even if i'm wrong i should have
01:07:59.420the freedom to express my false ideas you should counter my false ideas with um uh arguments and
01:08:07.580evidence not by the sword this yeah that's part of the refinement of conscience you could say that
01:08:14.060so then at that time during oliver cromwell's long reign long parliament appoints westminster assembly
01:08:23.580assembly assembly of 70 or so theologians who write westminster confession uh chapter 20 is the
01:08:31.500chapter on conscience it was so the parliament accepts westminster confession as the summary of
01:08:39.260biblical christianity and it was true that that conscience enters the doctor the political philosophy of
01:08:49.020the west that the the root of it goes back to 1528 lecture sermon that and how does that how does that
01:08:57.180parallel wilber wilberforce's emergence as an anti-slavery campaigner he he comes to 300 years later uh
01:09:04.540yeah but the the background of it is martin luther's sermon which john locke quotes in his letter concerning
01:09:12.460toleration which uh medicine james madison when introducing bill of rights in america he quotes
01:09:19.500martin luther's sermon it's called on two kingdoms there are two kingdoms kingdom of christ which has come
01:09:27.020into this world and the kingdom of man the emperor and the church the pope have authority over me in some
01:09:36.540areas but the church doesn't own my soul emperor doesn't own my soul if i have accepted jesus as my
01:09:44.220lord 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
01:09:52.940the kings of the earth therefore my heart belongs to jesus and the government has no business in interfering
01:10:01.420with my conscience with my okay so now now these ideas come into india and you talked about the
01:10:06.620missionary distribution in the vernacular and one of the things you do quite nicely i thought in in in
01:10:12.220the book that made your world is detail out the effects on the language and the culture of the societies
01:10:21.580in which to which the bible was uh what would you say where the to the languages in the societies that
01:10:28.780were provided with or offered a translation of the bible because it meant a codification of the
01:10:33.980language and often the transformation of what was only a spoken language into a written language to the
01:10:41.020demarcation of the language as a consequence to the possibility of a written civilization and then also
01:10:48.540to the possibility of that society now developing its own literature literary vernacular as an offshoot of
01:10:56.220the of the of the biblical corpus a very interesting development of the word a as a consequence of the
01:11:02.780translation efforts because they often get pilloried in the west right because the missionaries are seen as
01:11:07.820part of this oppressive western colonial movement that that the radical types who criticize it don't
01:11:14.460differentiate 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
01:11:25.180uh absolutely so wilberforce is a central figure in this three things flow out of his 20-year battle
01:11:34.140on behalf of india uh one is permitting missionaries to go as educators because all the education was
01:11:43.900department of the church it didn't become a department of the state uh until much later so at that time
01:11:50.860every teacher there's a reverend you know university teachers etc bishop is the chancellor uh of the
01:11:57.740universities so uh bilberforce is uh he fought for 20 years that it's not enough to uh send only soldiers
01:12:06.940and traders to india we must god could not have their belief in providence that history is not uh a mindless
01:12:16.620uh series of accidents that there is god or a repetitive cycle yes there is providence guiding
01:12:24.060history god called abraham isaac and jacob you follow me i will bless you i will bless all the
01:12:30.460nations through you so blessing india was part of god's plan he could not possibly have given india
01:12:37.420two british east india company to be exploited but to be blessed therefore we must send missionaries
01:12:44.540to educate india so that they can govern themselves so the it takes 20 years he loses okay so that we
01:12:51.900should let's let's let's let's not gloss over that too quickly so what we have here is in the midst of
01:12:57.900um structure that could have turned into a permanent empire we have a movement within that empire itself
01:13:05.260that draws on its own conscience to reveal to itself that any continued history of exploitation regardless of
01:13:13.260how profitable is immoral now that happens with the slave trade and it happens in the case of
01:13:18.140well much of the british empire but particularly in india so they're working against their own
01:13:22.700financial um interests in in many in many ways it's certainly the case with the war against the slave trade
01:13:29.580absolutely and so that's very weird right we want to remark on just how strange that is that's unheard of
01:13:36.700well let me illustrate that africa point first british ships are going to africa britain is industrial
01:13:45.420country it is producing a lot of things it's taking them selling them in africa africa is not producing
01:13:51.100anything at that point so the ships have to go empty to the caribbeans or the america
01:13:58.620there's a limit to how many monkeys and zebras you can take
01:14:02.540so they begin to take slaves which are needed in the caribbeans and the tea plantations and other
01:14:08.300plantations so you take the slaves and then they're making sugar and you're bringing sugar back to
01:14:16.140europe so this triangle of trade if the ships are going empty from africa to the to the americas then the
01:14:26.220shipping business in yeah and slavery and slavery can get a slavery can get a toehold because it's way
01:14:32.380outside on the fringes of the of commercial activity and invisible at least to begin with
01:14:37.980and in some sense and if your ships are not allowed to take slaves the spanish will the portuguese will
01:14:43.820so you might as well so uh when wilberforce is fighting against slave trade he is hurting
01:14:52.300the britain's economic interest and everybody knows that and that's why it takes a whole lifetime
01:14:58.620i've read calculations that the british spent more fighting the slave trade than they gained
01:15:03.020economically from supporting slavery to begin with by quite a large margin i don't know if that's true
01:15:08.460you know no no that's true that's that's what adam smith had already argued in uh his book the
01:15:17.340wealth of the nations was published 1776 the same year as american independence and he argues that free
01:15:25.660worker is much more productive and profitable than a slave so right so that was true except that
01:15:32.780that was an academic theory uh in reality the shipping company needs to take some something from africa
01:15:41.660to america's uh to make the navigation work so uh in the end whether the slaves are more productive or
01:15:49.900harmful right right right is an is an economic debate but so this is why wilberforce is a troublemaker
01:15:59.260he never called goes to india but he's important for abolition of sati widow birding as well but he has
01:16:06.940two main assistants zachary mccauley is his right hand man again against his fight against slavery
01:16:17.740charles grant is wilberforce's right hand man charles grant actually becomes a member of parliament
01:16:23.980and becomes the director of east india company he is wilberforce's right hand man
01:16:29.260again about how to reform india beginning with how to reform the british misrule in india
01:16:36.060because he has personally seen that east india company in governing india is a gang of public
01:16:43.740robbers lord mccauley the son of zachary mccauley he's the one who called east india companies rule
01:16:51.100for the first 50 years as a gang of public robbers rule of an evil genie because the soldiers and traders
01:16:58.780who had come to india they were basically riffraff of british society like the conquistadors in yes in
01:17:06.540the new world correct so they were looting did god give india to us so that we might loot india this
01:17:16.460was the conscience troubling charles grant and he wrote the book in 1793 at the request of wilberforce
01:17:25.500it was not published in 93 it was hand copied they had copies in those days this was for the
01:17:32.380members of parliament because the charter of east india company they had the monopoly so the charter
01:17:38.140had to be renewed every 20 years and in this was written to influence the renewal of the charter and to
01:17:45.500insert a missionary clause so from 1793 onwards grant begins to play a very important role although
01:17:54.380wilberforce is the face the political face of that movement so they a fight for um education
01:18:05.500and the parliament finally in 18 yeah they granted a hundred thousand is that they granted a hundred thousand
01:18:12.220pounds or they forced the the distribution of a hundred thousand pounds uh hundred thousand rupees
01:18:17.260which was sorry rupees yeah equal of the pound more or less that from its profit east india company must
01:18:26.460spend hundred thousand rupees for public education so that we begin to train indians to govern india
01:18:34.700now this right again a revolutionary an unbelievably revolutionary concept it's it's unprecedented it's
01:18:43.020anti-empire in the extreme and and uh lord macaulay who argued and finally won the debate in parliament
01:18:51.740in 1833 he says exactly what you're saying that uh this has never happened but this would be our good
01:19:00.300greatest glory not that we are ruling over illiterate people but that we found people living in darkness
01:19:09.420incapable of governing themselves and we so ruled over them that they became capable of ruling themselves okay
01:19:17.980now so let's take that apart a bit because you know the the radical types again are going to insist that
01:19:23.820england or that britain imposed english as a language on on india and that that the fundamental again the
01:19:30.780fundamental orientation was exploitative but one of the things that you point out quite clearly is that
01:19:36.700the missionary types in particular driven by their biblical presuppositions did everything they could
01:19:43.260to translate the bible itself into the local vernaculars into every language that anybody has
01:19:48.220spoke and that's part of that general missionary evangelizing proclivity i went to the museum of the
01:19:54.780bible in washington they have a really it's a great museum by the way um they have a very interesting
01:20:00.220room there that contains virtually every one copy of a bible translated into almost all the languages that
01:20:10.220the bible has been translated into and there's a variety of empty shelves although a small proportion
01:20:17.100that are devoted to the next decades i think they figured the bible will be translated into virtually every
01:20:24.380living language within 40 years from now something like that and so those biblical translators had
01:20:31.740tremendous respect for the local vernaculars they translate they transformed them into written languages which
01:20:37.420was no small feat and they enabled all of those people to start to learn to read and to think for
01:20:43.260themselves that's that's how it looks right so and it's likewise the case that in europe the monasteries
01:20:49.980were the the the central focus of what became partly industrial production and also institutes of higher
01:20:58.300higher education so this idea that the the biblical world was was opposed to education and to enlightenment
01:21:09.020in general that's fault that's just false it's backwards absolutely true um everyone agreed whether
01:21:19.100christians or non-christians politicians everyone agreed that if india had to be reformed vernaculars had to be
01:21:27.260developed because that is what happened in europe latin was the language of learning
01:21:35.900language of course but with the reformation german and french and english and spanish and
01:21:43.180purge purge every language began to be developed and so because that's what the principle of human
01:21:51.980equality meant that uh every child should be able to study in his own mother tongue in his own heart
01:21:59.820language right well every every soul had to be reached yes but also not just reached to be taken to heaven
01:22:09.340but reached to become king because the lamb of god shed his blood so that slaves of satan are transformed into
01:22:19.180the sons of the sons of god serving their father managing his affairs doing his his will in their life
01:22:26.780and making sure that god's will is being done on earth so everyone becomes a king and therefore
01:22:32.700the 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
01:22:39.500so everyone has to be educated in his own mother tongue this is what begins this is the thrust of the
01:22:47.820entire missionary enterprise british and non-british in india but the question is what exactly will develop
01:22:56.940indian vernaculars no pundit no imam had any interest in any of indian languages at that time india had three
01:23:09.340classical languages sanskrit was the language of brahmans but only of males arabic was the language of
01:23:18.860the mosque of imams and the only and the only uh language that the quran could be uh distributed in
01:23:26.940at that time and persian so mughal empire humayu had made persian the official court language of india
01:23:37.820in order to keep the non-persian speaking muslims away from the throne
01:23:44.380so the persian was a sophisticated language but in india it was used as a language of discrimination
01:23:51.660just as sanskrit was used as a language of discrimination against women against lower
01:23:57.020caste so no hindu muslim scholar had any interest in any of indian languages the current national
01:24:05.660language hindi didn't exist urdu didn't exist there were dialects that these missionaries
01:24:13.420began to transform first was hindustani well right that and we should concentrate on that too because
01:24:19.260people don't really understand this you know when i went to switzerland in 1982 there were still
01:24:26.540places in the backwoods in switzerland where the people at the top of the mountain spoke a language
01:24:31.660so different from the people at the bottom that they couldn't understand each other
01:24:35.820and so the rule of thumb for languages isn't well the language is basically comprehensible by everyone but
01:24:43.020there are various accents the rule is that there's an unbelievable multitude of dialects
01:24:48.460such that people in one village can't understand the people in the next village
01:24:52.940and so then the european missionaries come in and start to codify and unite these languages
01:24:58.220and also to give them their written expression first of all developing an alphabet often
01:25:04.220correct so um this the the question that really occupied was that once you have these hundred thousand rupees
01:25:17.580how is that money going to be used and there were processes who were saying that we should use this money to
01:25:25.580teach sanskrit arabic and persian so there was already sanskrit college in banaras funded by east india
01:25:33.820company and calcutta madasa teaching arabic funded by east india company but others began to say
01:25:40.460that look if somebody masters all the sanskrit literature and all the arabic literature he or
01:25:46.860she is not going to be give the able to give to in vernacular knowledge of science knowledge of economics
01:25:54.940knowledge of technology of law of right these these productive these productive fields which you also
01:26:00.700whose development you also traced in large part to the monastic tradition yes so that's why it was
01:26:07.820the anglicist argued that we can't educate everybody with the limited money that i have
01:26:14.940we have therefore let's teach english so there will be a group of indians small group of indians who are
01:26:23.740able to read english literature and take the knowledge from england give it into bengali give
01:26:31.340it into gujarati and hindi so lang english language was brought to india to empower indian vernaculars
01:26:41.340now we have many high caste hindus did you suppose that there's a single university in the west that actually teaches that fact
01:26:47.740well a friend of mine took these ideas which you have read and wrote a phd thesis which was submitted to
01:26:57.340the university of nakpur five brahmans were appointed to study his thesis before giving him a phd they took
01:27:04.460five years to investigate his thesis because he was showing that every single modern indian vernacular
01:27:11.260language is creation of bible language is creation of bible translators after five years they gave him a phd
01:27:18.220and they wrote in their recommendation letter that when his book is published it should be a required
01:27:24.940reading in all the department of linguistics that every single modern language is a creation of bible
01:27:33.180translators uh and that's that's absolutely unbelievable and and you i i just can't imagine
01:27:41.580that being accepted without a tremendous amount of resistance anywhere that idea anywhere in the west
01:27:47.660his book is called let there be india it's a big book the shorter version is still in print the bigger
01:27:54.700version we have to reprint um but you're absolutely right that right now there are about hundred dialects in
01:28:02.540india which are being transformed into literary languages right right missionaries who are risking them
01:28:10.300these are indian missionaries who are going into remote areas tribal areas hill hills uh sacrificing
01:28:18.300everything uh in order to uh transform these people because a civilization can only grow as far as their
01:28:27.580language will take them a stone age tribe doesn't have you can't teach science to them you can't teach
01:28:36.220business law to them because their dialect doesn't have the vocabulary the grammar the structure
01:28:42.780to make these books available so a bible transfer what do you think what do you think of arguments that
01:28:49.420might point out that that the counter argument might be well why should we um assume that the benefits
01:28:57.500of say western civilization or biblical civilization for that matter should be imposed on these people
01:29:05.500why can't we let them just pursue their own development why should we assume that there's anything
01:29:09.660superior about uh biblical civilization in relationship to stone age life yes uh that's a valid question
01:29:19.340uh my wife and i wrote a book on william carey uh the father of modern india who was the main figure behind
01:29:29.260this bible translation and publications for the first 40 years uh of the modern india now he was also the
01:29:38.140man who fought against widow burning he yes burned alive he fought you also have an interesting story in your
01:29:45.660book about a girl that was starved to death by her parents actually yes but i i all actually i also
01:29:53.820began a fight against revival of video burning in uh 1987 an 18 year old widow was burnt alive
01:30:03.260that's when i began to discover these uh builders of modern india right as part of an equally valid
01:30:08.940alternate cultural tradition yes but the point i was making was that a lady speaking in harvard university
01:30:19.420was showed our book on william carey to her audience and she said that here is a gentleman
01:30:27.340a cobbler turned linguist the father of modern india who helped abolish widow burning
01:30:33.820and an american caucasian white woman doing phd in harvard she got mad at the speaker what right
01:30:44.300did this yeah white english man have to say that burning videos alive is bad well that's a good that's
01:30:52.460exactly the question we asked earlier about slavery if you don't buy the doctrine that women have
01:30:58.860in have what in permanent and and uh divinely valuable souls and and the kind of kingship
01:31:08.940in principle that you describe then there's nothing stopping you from doing that except
01:31:15.020the arbitrary facts of chance and society you have to have a view of of the individual as made in the
01:31:23.340image of god and equal before the law yeah in consequence before you can say that that's self
01:31:30.860evidently wrong that's how it looks to me exactly so here is harvard university teaching a phd scholar
01:31:39.020that all cultures are equally valid if a culture burns the widow alive that's valid should be respected
01:31:48.140and what if they gas the jews how's that for valid or what if they kill six million ukrainians that okay
01:31:54.540too about the jews they have very strong presence in hollywood so uh harvard would be afraid of taking
01:32:02.300on hollywood because there are some boundaries arbitrary boundaries but the the jews and right but but
01:32:10.140it isn't much of it isn't much of a leap from widow burning to to to the holocaust furnaces it's just a
01:32:16.300matter of scale exactly so when we first hand discovered infanticide in india you just alluded
01:32:25.260to it this little girl sheila 18 month old being starved to death by tell that story tell that story
01:32:33.180that's a very interesting story well i was we had ruth and i had my wife ruth and i had just moved into
01:32:40.300uh a village in the middle of nowhere uh in chattapur district madhapadesh and i was writing my first
01:32:50.540book the world of gurus which was later than published by the uh biggest publisher in asia vikas and it
01:32:59.260became a textbook in many universities including cambridge so in study of contemporary hinduism was using my
01:33:07.580book so that's what makes me an indian philosopher uh who studied hinduism written a book so i was
01:33:15.100writing we had no table and chair we had uh put a uh small wood into the wall and i was sitting on a
01:33:24.540stool and writing my wife sat on the other side of the bed my english was very poor but she had had
01:33:30.540english education she was editing and typing uh my manuscript when i didn't have enough work for
01:33:38.220her she would pick up her bicycle and go into the village door to door to find out how many kids were
01:33:43.820there how many were going to school what can we do for those who are not studying etc so she ran into
01:33:51.180a 10 year old girl lalta and asked her how many brothers and sisters do you have lalta said three maybe
01:33:58.060four so ruth was curious do you have four or do you have three she said well three fourth is almost
01:34:03.980dead can i come and see the fourth so lalta took uh ruth in the middle of this is one bedroom hut with
01:34:12.380patched roof no light light is sunlight is just coming through the roof and here's this 18 month old
01:34:20.700girl in the middle of the room on a string cot with no mattress or anything under it
01:34:28.060unable to cry flies all over her because puss is oozing out of everywhere including her head
01:34:36.220ruth began to cry what's wrong with her the mother smugged oh she doesn't eat anything whatever we
01:34:42.620give her she vomits so have you taken her to the hospital how can we take her to the hospital we
01:34:47.900don'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
01:34:54.060the hospital i can manage the city well take your husband my husband who will look after the cows the
01:35:01.420field ruth said really i'll give you the money to hire a laborer to look after your field for one day
01:35:09.820you go with your husband okay i'll also come with you she said to get rid of ruth she said okay i'll
01:35:16.620talk to my husband when he comes in the evening so ruth came back started urging me that you go and
01:35:23.020talk to the husband i've done my job i went back they decided they're not going to the hospital
01:35:28.860why we don't have any money but my wife told you she'll give the money oh we don't want to get into
01:35:34.220debt 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
01:35:41.340well my wife's told you that she'll pay for a laborer then they got angry at me why are you bothered
01:35:48.620it and i couldn't understand well that's a good question that's a good question i i couldn't
01:35:54.460understand the only rational explanation as far as i'm concerned was that they really wanted to kill
01:36:02.060the baby is that possible i didn't believe that but i decided to use that to mobilize public opinion
01:36:11.980that are you killing this girl why are you so heartless why don't you take a knife stab her
01:36:19.260why are you prolonging her misery they were a lot more angry at me i found no support in the village
01:36:27.660because i didn't know at that time that female infanticide was a common practice everybody did it if
01:36:34.540you had a second or third daughter so um i decided to i pretended that i'm angry i raised my voice
01:36:43.740that look if you don't take this child to the hospital tomorrow i'm bringing the police here
01:36:48.940that you are murdering this baby so one elderly man said to them that look uh you better listen to
01:36:55.660this guy he's crazy he might actually bring the police and in that case you will have to pay for
01:37:01.100the hospital expense right now they are offering to pay take it so the girl went a long story which
01:37:07.980i discussed in the chapter uh twice the process was repeated she spent two three weeks in the hospital
01:37:14.780came to her home recovered the mother will come and fight and ruth would say of course we want you to
01:37:21.020bring up your child we will pay for the milk you raise your daughter but uh the second time within two
01:37:29.820days the child was dead i was convinced that the parents had killed her ruth didn't believe that
01:37:35.900it was possible for a parent to kill their child uh until we saw three four other kids being killed
01:37:44.540by their parents because one woman came she saw all of this struggle she had just had twins she wanted us
01:37:52.300to take the weaker and the darker kid and we had just had our own baby and ruth said no i'll give you the
01:37:58.940money i can't take responsibility for a second child and next day the child was dead so we saw instances
01:38:06.620like that uh and then we realized that it is not self-evident to these people that every child has an
01:38:15.340inalienable right to life that's our world view and it's not just they're not bad people they're doing what
01:38:24.060everybody else does a second daughter is a liability uh one daughter is enough to look after the siblings
01:38:31.020to cook to clean yeah well one whether they're bad or not is not the issue in some real fundamental
01:38:37.180sense the issue is whether or not that is bad you know and it's multi-dimensional reality and
01:38:43.740you can be a relativist and you can say well you know those are the breaks given the socioeconomic
01:38:48.380conditions but then you have to say well then it's okay for people to kill their daughters it's like
01:38:53.020well maybe that's not okay like seriously and that's a that's a strange case because you have to come
01:38:58.460down to one side or the other either it's okay or it isn't those are the only options so so imagine
01:39:04.700there is no law that you shall not kill your child then it is culture everybody does it
01:39:12.860why shouldn't i does the culture decide whether killing an unwanted girl is right or wrong well
01:39:22.860the nuremberg decision was that the culture doesn't get to decide so right fundamentally that was the
01:39:29.260nuremberg decision but the americans had the dominant power at that time to overrule the fascist argument
01:39:37.420the fascists right ran but but the thing is if you dispense with it you have to dispense with
01:39:43.180the nuremberg judgment and then what the what the germans did in world war ii was just a matter of
01:39:48.220culture like these these ideas they have some pretty i know you know this i'm not telling you this obviously
01:39:53.500you 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
01:39:58.540that but i would like to so i'd like to close this properly and i would like in all likelihood to talk
01:40:03.900to you again especially about your newer projects your work on islam for example i think that would
01:40:08.620be a great discussion but let's go back to the effect the effect of the biblical revolution in
01:40:14.300india maybe you could just flesh that out for people and and i know that's a terribly complicated
01:40:19.740thing to do no no we can do the simple thing from where we began so this one is available dialects
01:40:27.420are being turned into languages so that every child has an opportunity to study which it had never
01:40:36.460happened that the son of a shepherd will learn to read write do mathematics son of a fisherman a
01:40:43.660carpenter this has never happened so uh the nation begins to rise up mughal are ruling delhi for 250 years
01:40:54.780they haven't built one hospital for women in delhi the first hospital in delhi is saint stephen's
01:41:03.580hospital which was born because of a 16 year old english girl priscilla she comes because her brother had
01:41:11.900been killed in seven uh 1857 uh revolt she comes to bless those who had killed her brother and she sits by the
01:41:23.900river king yamuna in uh darya ganja in delhi and with its chest of medicines begin to give free medicines to
01:41:34.140women who have no one so here you have the modal empire for 250 years in delhi has not built one hospital
01:41:43.580for women in india for their own women in delhi when a 16 year old girl comes and because jesus said
01:41:52.380said go and preach the kingdom of god and heal the sick so that compassion which the the upper caste
01:42:02.780indians just cannot understand because they don't have that compassion they are using medicine to make
01:42:09.420money uh there are exceptions but by and large the medicine has become a greed driven business it's not a
01:42:20.700ministry of compassion uh which it used to be uh so agriculture indian agriculture is transformed william
01:42:29.980carey himself in 1820 he establishes the first agri-horticultural society in calcutta no such
01:42:39.980society exists anywhere he's not copying anything from england he's realizing because charles grant has
01:42:46.620written in 1793 the pathetic state of agriculture in india so beginning with william carey the all the
01:42:54.780builders of dams and irrigation canals uh sam heganbottom uh i'm i was professor in sam heganbottom
01:43:03.100university it was an institute when the book was published now it's a university a sam heganbottom
01:43:09.100university of agriculture technology and sciences finally uh norban burlock the father of green
01:43:16.780revolution in the revolution yeah the entire transformation of indian agriculture is a fruit
01:43:23.660of the bible because this is what isaiah has prophesied that uh in the last days the mountain of the
01:43:31.580lord will be lifted up nations will flock to study god's law they will beat their swords into plowshares
01:43:40.780their spears into pruning hooks the instruments of agriculture and horticulture because the bible sees
01:43:49.900the curse upon the ground the ground will grow thorns and thistles you will have to eat of the sweat of
01:43:57.980your brow the sin is not something that just takes your soul to hell still results in curse upon the
01:44:06.460land agricultural production and yeah and destructive toil which you said right within and one of the
01:44:14.140things you pointed out was that although there was tremendous respect so there's the sin-like aspect
01:44:22.540of toil but there's tremendous respect in the biblical corpus for the idea of productive work
01:44:27.340as opposed to pointless toil and the multiplication of work for the ennoblement of people yes i have that
01:44:35.180very important chapter on the rise of technology when you refer to the uh the wealth of europe came from
01:44:44.940a colonial exploitation that nonsense which is talked about the countries such as switzerland which never
01:44:50.940colonized anyone uh which never colonized anyone uh which never colonized anyone it was itself a colony of sweden
01:44:58.140for several hundred years and then for russia of several hundred years these nations have blossomed because
01:45:05.100of the intellectual and transformation including uh the work work ethic etc right so this is what the bible
01:45:15.100brings brings to india although as the universities have removed the bible indians don't know uh
01:45:24.540their own history it's very yeah well welcome to the club yeah it's very embarrassing for a hindu
01:45:32.300historian to admit uh that it is simple 16 year old girl who is just obeying christ in compassion
01:45:41.500that leads to the foundation of the first important first hospital in delhi etc uh but the entire
01:45:50.940transformation of agriculture medicine education the transformation of languages that we have talked
01:45:57.820about um and then and then eventually the the political transformation and the emancipation of india
01:46:04.620free press law legal system that we have four hundred four thousand years of history and prehistory not a single
01:46:13.980civilization has given us a concept of rule of law equality before law justice for all the creation of civil
01:46:23.500services though which is called the steel frame of in of india it was sons of the pastors of poor pastors in
01:46:33.100england they sent their sons to india to build the indian civil services and the police force right
01:46:40.060well that's part of that and that's part of that strange notion too that that's biblical i think in
01:46:44.940its essence that to lead is in the truest sense to serve and yes to lead is in the truest sense to serve
01:46:52.620those who need to be served most and that that's the highest possible ethical calling which is a very strange
01:46:58.780that's certainly not a brahmin doctrine no the doctrine there the doctrine in any society that has
01:47:04.780an explicit or implicit caste system and that's pretty much any society i would say that's virtually
01:47:10.700any society perhaps that doesn't have a biblical orientation is that why in the world would you
01:47:15.740serve subordinates that's that's that's completely beyond comprehension all that does is demean you
01:47:21.740yes yes transformation of leadership our first prime minister used to say that i'm prime minister which
01:47:31.180means that i'm the first servant prime minister minister is a servant now i heard him when i was only 13
01:47:39.020years old and i knew that he is saying that modern india had a political revolution where kings began to lose
01:47:50.300their power servants began to increase their power the first servant became the most important office
01:47:57.660so this revolution began uh the night before good friday when the king of kings the lord of lords
01:48:04.940got up from the dining table put on the robe of his servant took a basin of water started washing the
01:48:11.740feet of his disciples and he said that the new kingdom that i have brought is different from the kingdoms
01:48:18.060of this world their rulers lord it over them but amongst you whoever wants to be the greatest will
01:48:24.700become the servant so this political revolution came into india but we are losing it political office
01:48:32.700now means the right to loot uh education now means a university degree is a license to loot that's why our
01:48:42.380nations are as corrupt as they are because the the all the senior officers uh bankers police officers
01:48:51.660they're highly educated people but university degree simply means the license to loot if the education is
01:49:00.300not a transformation of character of making you servant that you are being given this privilege to serve your
01:49:08.860people be a good neighbor right look i think that's a good place to stop you know that's a nice ending
01:49:17.340uh obviously there we could talk for hours and i would like to talk to you again as i said particularly
01:49:23.340about your new work but uh i appreciate this very much i just reiterate for those who are listening
01:49:28.620um the book i would say that that is perhaps central to the discussion we had today is called is
01:49:35.260entitled the book that made your world it was published by thomas nelson in 2011 and so it's a tour
01:49:41.180de force i would say conceptually and historically uh um conceptually because
01:49:49.100it brings to light in a very interesting way and in a non-western way which is also extremely
01:49:54.300interesting the truly revolutionary nature of the distribution of the biblical writings it's it's hard
01:50:00.300to overstate their revolutionary significance and then um in terms of breadth and depth while there's
01:50:06.220a wealth of historical information that is encapsulated in the book and it's written in a lovely
01:50:11.900style it was very straightforward read uh despite its dense layering of information and so um i much
01:50:18.140appreciated it and uh appreciate your conversation with me today and i hope everybody who's listening
01:50:23.420found it thought-provoking and useful and and uh valuable so let's speak again sure you bet you bet
01:50:30.940yeah really good to talk to you and and uh thanks for your books a lot thank you for what you're doing