India Rising

at Growth Online

by Roy Posner , from www.growthonline.org

June 28, 2008

India Rising

Several weeks ago, I was very surprised to read that America's most famous film director Steven Spielberg had considered selling his film company DreamWorks to a Bollywood company. For me this was another sign of India rising, but perhaps not in the way we normally think of it.

In recent years, I have taken a great interest in non-Hollywood films, and have really appreciated efforts from Iran, China, and now India. In 2007, I viewed many highly rated Indian and American films, and recently came to a startling conclusion: the top half dozen rated Indian films were preferable in my mind to the five nominees for best picture at the Oscars, which were Hollywood-based. Indian films like Water, Guru, Chak de! India, The Namesake, Gandhi My Father, Peck on the Cheek and others were very strong, if not excellent. When I thought about it further, it struck me that India has passed a threshold. They were not only rapidly becoming economic equals of the West, but cultural ones as well.

Now there are those who will say that India already has a great culture, and that in fact recent developments in Bollywood cannot compare to the great music, dance, architecture, and other cultural forms of the country. However, I took these developments as first signs of the emergence of the spiritual culture of India. Why spiritual? Because the new spirituality begins by first embracing the modern notion of rational thought, and then moves upward from there to insight, illumination, and intuition. It culminates in the many sided, integral knowledge of any object or matter of inquiry. India through her prosperity is beginning to shed old superstitions and is embracing the modern thought processes of the West. It reflects in these fine Indian films, and then goes a step further by bringing out a subtle presence that resides in this Spiritual Land.  

Again, there are those who will point to the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita as the greatest of all spiritual wisdom ever devised, and I would not disagree, but the current spiritual emergence is something quite different, having a different character. It adds evolution to the equation. India through her prosperity is emerging into a new mentality that is the first step to a spirituality that embraces the progressive, evolutionary movements of life. That mentality expresses in these very fine Indian films, and then suggest something more, some unique Indian quality that has yet to emerge. For me it is the progressive unfolding of spirit in the details of life; a hallmark of the emergence of the spiritual individual and the next stage of life on earth.