 Today we will go a little further back and essentially we will talk about the ancient and the medieval period, basically from the earliest times of history till approximately the coming of Akbar, that is the time period that we will be basically covering. And essentially the theme of today's story is how this country became rich, why it was so rich, what went into the creation of this unique country. A number of you had asked questions which I didn't pick up last time or the time before. One core question was what is India? So some of the what is India vala thing will be dealt with here. And another thing was about distribution of wealth. Is this a wealthy country? Is it a poor country? What happens to the wealth? So some of that also will be part of today's discussion. As usual please feel free to stop me wherever you feel like asking a question. There is no specific question and answer session, so wherever you feel like asking a question, please stop me immediately and we will carry it forward from there. The first thing is that some basic details about what was our money here, what was our stop, what was our wealth, who was our wealth, how was our wealth made. Do you know Futi Kodi? This is a Futi Kodi. When there were a lot of Futi Kodi, there used to be one Kodi. Futi Kodi is a proper money. You can buy things. 50 grams of peanuts. Give a Futi Kodi to Khomcha. He will give you a little bit of peanuts. To crush it, you have to break it and keep eating it. Futi Kodi makes Kodi. If you mix a lot of Futi Kodi, it becomes Kodi. If you mix 10 Kodi's, it becomes Dhamdi. My Dhamdi is nothing. I don't have anything. This is Dhamdi. Dhamdi is three-fourths of a pie. Two Dhamdi's have one Dheela. This is Dheela. And two Dheelos have one paisa. And one rupee of Rs.440. You've heard all these words before. In some colloquial Basha and the other. Futi Kodi to Kodi, Kodi to Dhamdi, Dhamdi to Dheela, Dheela to pie, pie to paisa, paisa to rupiah and look at the conversions. Dhamdi, Baraabar, 192 pie, Baraabar, 128, Dheela, Baraabar, 64, Paisa, Baraabar, 16, Anas, Baraabar, A, Krupiah. These conversion rates had been set up much, much before contemporary times when some bright young sparks like you discovered and there are some other value to such numbers also. You go up to one zero two eight one zero two four, I don't know what but you get your computer science type They're very complicated. It gives him K numbers are getting braver. This is Maybe the natural way of calculating that these People are ancestors discovered Yeah, Rupia. Yeah, that's a guy that I thought the earliest Paisa that we have in India the earliest coin that we have in India is a bent bar coin You take a silver bar you bend it slightly and you give it a stamp That's around 500 to 600 before the current era before Christ That is the kind of coin which is more in use in India That is from one of the Janapadas and the thing to notice over there is that a certain abstract shape is being put on it It's not just that there's a coin, coin Cuperononix design Which is not easy to imitate Which means they're creating some kind of a uniqueness to this thing By the time of the Magadan Empire, Ashoka the great They have come up with a coin which is called a Rupia Why should we know about the Rupia and the Magadan Empire and the Shoka and the greatness of India This is what you have inherited from your ancestors I for example have been told that I share 85% of my DNA with a banana There is a commonality The commonality is not just about DNAs The commonality is also about cultures and behavior patterns The language that you use about money, the manner in which you deal with money The manner in which you identify money That is something which has been part of Indian history, Indian culture Even before the term India had been coined, Hindustan had been coined, Hindu had been coined And it has been consistently been with us So what is a Rupia? Rupia is a coin which has got a Roup on it Roup is what? Roup is something which is abstract So you have a Goal Chakra, the Veel, which is the Dharma Chakra An indicator of constant movement, movement towards Then you sit down and you imagine, movement towards what? Movement towards people say, movement towards truth, movement towards morality Movement towards goodness, movement towards God You let your imagination work out But essentially the thing that this society wants to say is that there is going to be a movement There is an elephant on the coin Hathi ka Roup hai, Chakra ka Roup hai and these kind of signs Which are unique to every king, every city, every town, every political entity These signs we would discover being repeated over the centuries Till such time that there is a break And approximately the 11th, 12th century the Muslims come in And the Muslims, sorry, I am so sorry about Muslims The Afghans come in and the Afghans give a sharp break in this history of India One of the sharpest things they do is to change the currency Now the Rupia is not important anymore, they bring in something called the Jital Have you heard about the Jital anyone? Now I did not know about Jital till such time that I started studying history Jital was the currency that had been used in South Asia, in West Asia Right up till the borders of Turkey for 600 years It was the Afghans who had brought this currency in, had started giving it value And it was the normal common currency The old history of India had been forgotten, that there is something called the Rupia People knew it in their memories, you have not seen a Kauri or a Dhambri But you remember the word, you have heard it being used somewhere Chances are that as you grow older, you will use those words off and on And the next generation that will come after you will also be familiar with those words These memories, these ideas they do not die off very easily And yet it's possible to sideline them entirely and bring something new And that's something new with the coming in the Afghans was the Jital The Afghans also brought in many other things They brought in a new religion, a religion which had been in existence in India for almost 400 years now They brought in that religion in a form which was so aggressive That the memories of that aggression remain with us till today We don't remember the Moplas who settled in Kerala We don't remember the Bhoris who settled in Gujarat We don't remember the numerous traders who came and settled in Punjab Or in UP or in Bihar But we all remember the sultans who came And those who destroyed thousands of thousands of people The sultans documentation says that they killed off the Brahmins Sorry, they didn't kill off the Brahmins They actually killed off the Buddhists The Buddhist religious leaders, the Buddhist monks, followers of Buddha They vanished, that was the main religion of India Not Hinduism, Brahminism, Vedic religion, they were not the main religions The Afghans brought in a kind of change which dramatically transformed Indian society The Afghans remained in power for quite some time They brought in a lot of other kinds of changes But within the Afghans there was a unique character The unique thing about the Afghans was that the Afghans were extremely hierarchical The Afghans were very snooty and there was a handful of Afghans families which ran India Everyone else was below them, everyone else was a servant Everyone else did not have the right or the privilege to assert themselves in public In this poori halat, there was this small family from Sur which had a boy called Sher Shah He is taken over this title and they live in Rotaas in Bihar He is born in Bihar, so he may have his father and his grandfather may have come from Afghanistan But he is basically a Bihari, born and brought up in Bihar And he is most upset with the behavior of the Afghan nobility He says these guys are useless, they don't have any skills, they don't have any knowledge and yet they dominate That's very unfair and as soon as he gets an opportunity to rebel against them and do something of his own He starts doing it, he joins the Afghan army, he becomes part of them And now we have his history from his own sources He marries a widow, it's a rich widow The widow dies, leaves all her wealth to him, he marries a second widow She also dies, leaves all the wealth to him, he marries a third widow She also dies, leaves all his wealth to him Now if this guy is marrying three times, I'm sure that people like him At least the girls like him Because he doesn't have any extra authority or power to force anyone to marry him And what does he do with this wealth that is coming his way? The wealth is coming his way in the form of Sona, gold He starts hiring soldiers, till now the army is made up of people who have been given ikhtas, who have been given land grants And the revenue from the land grant is collected to fund your army This fellow starts giving salaries to his soldiers, cash payment ogha, friday ke den ogha And all of a sudden he discovers that the best soldiers in the land want to work with him He says you won't get any hissa from the loot, there is going to be no loot part anywhere in the Ladaai Jagda that we do But you will be paid on time and you are guaranteed a payment All of a sudden there is a huge army that stands with him He moves forward to Delhi and he occupies Delhi and he kicks out the Mughal who has come in and the Mughal Sultan is kicked out Sher Shah Suri sets up his rule, his rule lasts a total of five years You all heard of Sher Shah Suri, no? Because in India's history Sher Shah Suri ke baare mein kaha jata hai ki usne salag banai thi Aur usne bohar saare land reforms laaye thi Now all that starts happening in a span of five years In this period of five years one of the big things which Sher Shah does is he kicks out the Jital and he reintroduces the rupiah Sher Shah is saying as effectively as anyone else can say, I don't belong to an Afghan ancestry I am a person from this land, I remain with this land and the signs and symbols of an alien culture, he removes that Sher Shah dies off, Humayu comes back, Akbar comes in, Akbar is a young lad And Babar is a Sultan, Humayu is a Sultan and as soon as Akbar gets the first opportunity to assert himself Akbar says I am not a Sultan, who is a Sultan? A Sultan is someone who is subordinate to the Badshah, to the Khalifa The Khalifa who has his base in Turkey, who will finally be kicked out by Kamal Ataturk in 1923 When Turkey has a revolution and the military takes over, democracy is introduced in Turkey etc etc But much before Kamal Ataturk Akbar says I don't care for this kind of authority I am a Badshah of my own sort He establishes himself as a Badshah which also means that when he prays, he prays with God So that prayer will be in the name of Akbar, not in the name of the Khalifa Akbar has set himself up as a completely autonomous sovereign who is not subordinate to anyone And one of the first things Akbar does is, he starts insisting that no one has to use the Jital anymore Using the Jital is a crime, using the Rupiah is something that you have to do So, whatever you have heard about Akbar, there is a lot going on in politics these days The name of Akbar, the name of His Majesty is not the name of His Majesty The point is this, this is one of the first kings of those times who openly and clearly asserts that he is rooted in this land He belongs to this land and he is going to work for this land How does he do it? What does he do? The simple point for us is today that he picks up strands from the history of India Strands going back over 2000 years at that time Even Akbar's time is 2000 years old Rupiah Which Akbar introduces again This is one part of the story The second part of the story is I had promised you people that I will be talking to you about the development in medical sciences and stuff I am not going to tell you about everything that was happening in medical sciences But there is this small piece of information that you need to keep in mind In India, we have a detailed report coming up in 1794 about, in an English journal About a rhinoplasty operation, the reconstruction of the nose of this gentleman called Kovasji The report says he is a Maratha, now Kovasji is not a Maratha name Kovasji is a Parsi name The context is that Kovasji is a bullock cart driver, Parsi's are not bullock cart drivers They are owners of caravans, they own thousands of bullocks, thousands of carts And they hire these to the king for transporting military goods Hire them to businessmen for transporting bulk goods elsewhere This is the time when the Marathas are joining hands with the British against Tipu Sultan Tipu Sultan decides to attack the Marathas and first curb them Part of that strategy is to attack the Maratha caravans It is in that attack that Tipu's army attacks the caravan of which Kovasji is also a part Kovasji is captured and his nose is chopped off One year elapses and Kovasji comes to this doctor And these doctors, it's not one doctor, it's three doctors These three doctors, they operate on him, they reconstruct his nose And the English doctors of the East India Company are observing all this They write a detailed report of this in the form of a letter They draw pictures and they send it to London First it is published in India, a year later it is published in London And they all say Wanderstruck that this is a normal, regular operation that happens in India This is not something that is a rarity, it is commonplace knowledge in India We need to learn this from India This is something unique which we have not been able to discover through our sciences Some time ago Narendra Modi had cracked some jokes about rhinoplasty And the whole country like split up, what an idiot he is Excuse me, Narendra Modi was not an idiot, he was laughing The simple point here is this, it's not just the rupiah which is continuing with us It is also these medical skills which are continuing with us These medical skills, their processes, their instruments, how exactly they should work out All this has been described in the Sushruta Samhita Which could date anything from 600 BCE till 400 CE, 400 current era We let the historians fight about From our point of view the simple thing is this, that there was a continuity of knowledge From ancient times till at least the time when the British have come here And we know that once the British come here, just like in the time of the Afghans There was a disjunction between what had happened in India in the past And what would happen in India during the Sultan's time Some kind of a disjunction happens during British times also As soon as the British come and occupy and become the paramount power in India How this disjunction can be broken is a different story The main thing is that disjunction is so strong that we absolutely forget all these things And today we think that what existed in the past did not Or what our stories claim to have existed in the past actually did not exist The fact that some of these statements and descriptions are made as metaphorical statements They make it even more difficult for us to imagine Prof. Kavi Arya was just telling us about how engineers think in very objective ways Sir, I would add, not engineers, all Indians think in objective ways today It's close to impossible for Indians to imagine that there's a metaphorical way There's a symbolic way of communication The olden ways of communication are simply lost today We have become a completely modern society The philosophical loghen they would say, we have become a Cartesian society A society which has divided the world into Cartesian groups Each entity has to be understood in its own Once you have understood the parts, you bring them together and the whole is made My suspicion is that sometimes there are structures when you bring the parts together It's much more than the whole The whole is much more than the addition of the parts How this would work out for us in history, how this would work out for us in society That is something which we have to wonder about, which we have to explore Which we have to think about, how it can be done, otherwise I also had a memory of Lady Shurpanaka's story The first description was that after cutting the nose, it was Shurpanaka's But I don't know if Shurpanaka's nose was really connected or not Was it really cut or not What would be the problem with Lakshmanbhai? Why did a beautiful girl come and behave like this with him? Since all this is a story of a story I thought it would be good if the children don't tell such things But I wanted to write that This India that we are talking about, what is India? This is approximately it, you have to look at things Or at least this is how I would recommend that you look at things This way of looking at things is not part of Indian history I would say I am one of the first persons in India at least Who has been talking about the geographical spread of India This is the geographical spread This is the world which has been in touch with each other Ever since we know of history People would start from somewhere in South Africa The currents would take them all over They have discovered the monsoon currents You get into a boat and you just sit like a kadu And if you have taken your boat into the ocean at the right time At a speed of 37 knots, your boat will be pushed towards India Depending on which dhara you have gone into Either you will come along the coast or you will come straight towards India The normal way of navigation The normal scientific way of navigation Is to follow the coastline so that you don't get lost If you read European stories of navigation They are all moving along the coast There was no such thing in this area along the coast You sit in the ship from here But go from here, you cannot see the coast The coast is 2,000 miles away from you It is the currents which is taking you People are routinely and normally moving You pick up your stuff over here Get into the second ship and go further east As soon as the season changes The month of June comes You will come back to Africa This body of people is in constant touch with each other This body of people is identifying themselves as one single whole But in this one single whole This body of people is also identifying this touch of land as unique This touch of land is unique Because it is isolated from the rest of the landmass On one side is Balochistan and the desert There are the mountains, there is the desert And then you move into the Indus valley area When you cross the Sindh Sindh is a very broad river So when you cross the Sindh you know you have crossed a major landmark If you come up from the north From what is currently Afghanistan You once again Those of you who have been into the Himalayas Would have experienced this You are walking plain like this And suddenly the mountain comes in front of you The mountain is so dramatic So unique that they simply know To gradually climb the mountain They are standing in front of you When you come by Afghanistan When you cross the Himalayas The disjunction between the land Before the mountain on the other side of the mountain And this side of the mountain is so dramatic That you cannot but realize That you have come to a new land Forget language, forget food habits, forget clothes Just the physical location is different And the same goes if you go east This land was a land about which I have talked to you earlier If you compare it with Europe Look at the population and the size You discover that this land was very sparsely populated Europe's total area had 10.18 million square kilometers South Asia had 5 million square kilometers South Asia was Afghanistan Coming up till the borders of Burma All of South Asia had 170 million population No, not including Burma Burma is across the mountain ranges You have already got a broad forest area And it is difficult to cross There are a lot of tribes which are eager to kill you So you basically remain in the Brahmaputra valley Or you remain in what is the Delta region of Bangladesh You remain over there Burma became part of India with the British Burma has been in touch with India throughout history But the thing is that you know That that is a different area from this Just like there is a lot of continuity From here to here But still you recognize that this area is different The main thing is this India is being identified as a unique different place As compared to the rest of Asia Two points Asia as a trading cultural Political entity is distinct from the rest of the world Asia, Africa, they belong to one unit Within this unit there is a special sub-unit Which would be called India And everyone who comes across into this land He says, I have come to India Far away, the sea over here is very treacherous So you don't easily cross this sea You have to be a skilled navik So you know that when you are going into those lands You are going into a different land Moreover they are very densely forested And the forest over there is very different From the forest in South Asia The Indian forests are forests If you ever get the chance to roam in the forests Then you can go in the forests of India Without any luggage And you will be able to survive very easily You don't need any specialized survival skills In order to survive and thrive in the jungles of India Thailand and Malaysia is not like that They need special skills The people over there have difficulty in living there And therefore the people in Thailand and Malaysia Were relatively poor people most of the time in history In contrast to what happens in South Asia The simple point also is this That in this extremely sparsely populated land The land is very rich The land allows you to survive and thrive very easily Even today, people who know about agriculture They say that you have a lot of areas in India Where you can go and make a profit And after three months, you can harvest there You will get all your vegetables You will be able to eat for a year You will be able to sell in the market You really don't need to work much You really don't need to work much Is the basic identifying characteristic about India It's a land rich in honey and milk And gold and silks You can get your honey quite easily You can get your milk very easily You can get your gold very easily You can get your silks and cottons very easily You really don't need to work hard So what is hard work? I mean to tell you guys that you don't need to work hard You will be objecting for a few seconds You will say that you are still studying You are working so hard Believe me, the struggle for existence in India Throughout history has been a very easy struggle Indians have had it some of the easiest lives in the world Through history Even today it's not a very difficult life You have to work a little more There are more problems But otherwise India has been an easy on its people Because you didn't have to work much India seems to have gotten into the memories Of the rest of the world is the place Where you don't work much The Europeans even had a whole image Of the land of the lotus eaters What do they do? They simply hang out Eating lotus root This lotus root is sweet Not the kind of lotus root Which you get in the market nowadays Which is tasteless If you eat the wild lotus root The wild lotus root is sweet Have you people eaten lotus root? You know what a lotus root is Now it is part of European memories It goes into Homer's description Of Odyssey in the Iliad Now this people who don't work All that they do is just hang around Live a very comfortable life And this is one of the illustrations How that comfortable life Basically means give us And you are very happy This way of living Would be called the serendipitous way of living The word serendipitous came to us Somewhere in the early 20th century When the Europeans started talking about Because in the early 20th century India didn't survive like this There was poverty in India People were starving They started talking about this Sri Lanka The European name for Sri Lanka is serendip People live in serendip So they came up with a word Called serendipitous Serendipity What is serendipity? You just sit You stare at the wall Wonder Have you people gone to an art gallery ever? You just go and have a look at the painting Read meanings into it Find new things to do about it You just imagine In our university we have a department Called the department of maths They actually should be called The department of numbers Because they don't do the kind of maths Which everyone else seems to be doing Mostly good at number systems And my Colleagues who hate the mathematic people They say that Mathematics like this is over 40 years ago Now it has no value I don't know what conflicts between the mathematics Is that the right way of working Or the wrong way of working I don't know But I do know how they work They just hang around and they talk So should we watch a film Or not Is there more sugar in coffee Or less coffee temperature And then all of a sudden they simply leave everything And they'll push off They'll go off to the room And they'll start writing something They ask what they were doing Because they didn't have half an hour Turns out there was an idea They take it very seriously This is what perhaps Is all serendipity all about You just hang around, take life comfortably Play around with ideas Work on them In the case of India it seems to have Given very positive results Historically positive results A good thing in many ways One of the ways In which it seemed to be good That we can see is in the number system The discovery of zero The discovery of the solution To the quadratic equations The discovery of the sine function Development of Indian variety of mathematics At some time Zero counting from one to nine Was normal People knew about zero also for a very long time Zero was something Where there was a gap between two numbers It was a zero But the fact that you can give A place value to zero This was something which required Serendipitous thinking This required some professor To just sit at his table And imagine His imagining Brahmabhat And he comes up with this idea That if you give it a place value It starts making sense In the seventh, eighth century In Gwalior We even find an inscription Approximately the same time as Brahmabhat Is working in Ujjain We find in his inscription In which we can notice One and zero We get physical proof Physical proof That zero started working with a place value At this time We have memories proof We get some written documents But this was how Students were being taught now This was how knowledge was being communicated We get concrete archaeological evidence Through this inscription And Why was it that Mr. Brahmagupta is Zero? He's discovering it My submission is Other people give other kind of answers My suggestion is This happens simply because it's possible for him He's living in a society Where he does not have to fill up ACRs He does not have to Show performance He does not have to claim something new all the time He can just hang around and imagine And do things There would have been hundreds of others like him He was the one who came up with this idea Others may or may not have come up with this idea We don't know But the thing is When you give people this kind of freedom Then it becomes possible for them to Move forward and create something unique Which is also abstract And one of the suggestions that has been made is That it becomes possible for him to talk About this thing in abstract Because he's coming from India Where there is already a philosophical concept called Shunya The philosophical concept of Shunya Has been The mathematical idea of zero And they've been put together And a completely new way of doing mathematics Comes into existence Discovery of zero opens up An efficient way of calculating Very large numbers It enables People to Discover things which could not be imagined Till now The rules of zero that Brahmagupta gives to us Are about multiplication Subtraction and multiplication You Add zero to something It remains one You subtract zero from one It remains one You multiply one with zero It becomes a zero But what happens if you divide one by zero And his imagination falters And he does not know what to do about it It remains like this for a few hundred years People have discovered The value of account keeping Easy account keeping So this is not just a mathematical discovery Done in a serendipitous manner etc Just in case you're thinking that lotus-eaters are working It has immediate practical value And the immediate practical value Is that it Trade booms even more Large scale trade starts happening Records start getting kept Which then becomes sources for history for us The businesses start Giving money on Because now it is possible to Make records for a much longer period Than had been possible earlier It is Bhaskara who comes up With the idea that what happens If you divide something with zero And that idea also comes In a serendipitous manner Now you have from First you were imagining Shunya, nothing And now you're imagining infinity And between infinity and Shunya Comes a mother of Sangama Who says Now I will tell you how to Calculate the value of Pi The value of Pi is known to people Baiz but are Saab But exactly Baiz but are Saab How to describe it This is not something that we know And they come up with approximations 3, 3.1 3.1, 4 A lot of people are working on it It is this guy who says Now that we have infinity Now that we have the value of Shunya Now we have to calculate the value of Pi Till the point that you wish to Calculate the value of Pi He and his students Between them, he is from Kerala Between them they open up An entire area of research For people An entire area where you could Now start constructing buildings You could start constructing huge structures But there was also Another thing that he comes up with And he says that numbers can also Be quantitative RIN Now this idea is coming from Businesses So he says that if there is RIN in the business Then we can write it in Gharit As soon as you start understanding RIN in Gharit You start coming up with Quadratic equations solutions Vigative solution also And this is something which The Europeans will discover only in the 17th century The 17th century Europeans Are arranging each other that you can do this What? It has already happened in India Desert Think that you will have to keep in mind What was the result of what happened in India What was the result of the discovery in Europe These are two divergent Ways of doing things The results of all these discoveries in Europe Are modern science booms In India about all that happens is Accountancy booms Did we say anything about Indians If I had not said it earlier Please let me put it now Indians have throughout history been Extraordinarily money minded The love of money is the most in India If you ever get a chance to study You should study in Hindi You should not study in English Or you should study in Hindi Translation from Sanskrit into whatever Indian language you can speak and read Every place is saying How should the enemy win How will you win How should the enemy's general win Give him money too He will come towards you How should the enemy's sons win Give him money too How should the enemy's people win Give him money too And just in case you think That this is very bad and this was That Kautilya Kutilta And you are insulting India You are insulting India It is not like that Prakash Singh Badal wants to win The elections against the congress So he goes And he gives the fellow In the congress who has not been given The ticket One guy got the ticket of the party The other guy didn't And the guy who didn't get the ticket He gives him money I will fund your election That guy is standing The guy of the congress is standing Prakash Singh Badal wins This is something which Prakash Singh Badal and Nitish Kumar And Munarendra Modi are doing in India But this is Also something which the Americans Are doing in Afghanistan All of a sudden early in the 21st century Afghanistan is in turmoil The Taliban has come into existence The Taliban is rebelling right, left and center And occupying all of Afghanistan And killing people at WIM The Americans come in with their bombs And the Americans try to bomb the Taliban And they discover that it's not possible So after some time They read up their quarterly Properly and they say ok So you've got 50 men And you've got some weapons with them And you have already killed 15 Afghans You have demonstrated that you are a power In that village where you live in How much will you take? $50,000? Or $1 million? Every Taliban commander Is purchased off by the Americans The Taliban is who had been talking about Afghanistan being free Our Jirga is the most important In our village We will never let anyone suffer All of them are sold Sorry, I'm using this wrong word These days the modern life Where there is a lot of morality We say that they are sold They are not sold They take money and for the time being They stop killing each other Kautilya comes To the aid of the Americans This is the kind of continuity That we keep on seeing In India And the love that Indians have For money And therefore all this mathematics Sticks to money, power And authority There is no development of science As far as I understand The one thing which breaks The bonds of old traditions Is the discovery of The new kind of trigonometry The Indian mathematicians Come up with ways of finding The sign value of close to anything You give them the angle And they will be able to tell you the sign value The Greeks also knew sign value And they would be able to tell you The sign value of 0, 30, 45, 60 and 90 Indians have figured out Ways of telling you the value of any angle Now once you know How you can give the sign value of any angle This is the sign 30 Can you even remember sign 30 That's how it comes out So all that you need to do is find it out And once you've discovered The sign value of 1 by 7 Then you can actually Just put your finger like this Measure the angle between The sun and the moon And you can sit back and say What is the distance From the earth to the sun What is the distance from the earth to the moon The sun is 400 times more distant than the moon Then you sit at some other place In a different season And you take a reading on the moon And you know the exact distance between the sun And the moon And now you just have to extrapolate it To give you the distance between the earth and the sun You have actually Done what Galileo would be doing in Europe Later on You've actually opened up imagination For human beings Such a big way That anyone can reach out anywhere And this Reaching out anywhere It gets immediately translated into power in India And it results in the emergence of some of the Largest buildings in the world Huge buildings These huge These huge buildings one of my favorites Is the Bredeshwara temple in Tanjore The Bredeshwara temple in Tanjore Comes up And it has got this 80 Tan stone on top of it It's got this 80 tan stone on top of it And how do you reach this stone over there How is the temple constructed We talked about this temple earlier This is a temple in use for a thousand years This is a temple which has been Extremely ill treated by its users And still the temple stands here And this temple stands here because of that 80 tan rock on top of it Because all the stones which have been cut Have been cut properly How do you cut these stones properly The first stone has to be one size The second stone has to be done just the right Different size So you can't have a production line in which You tell your Every stone has to be unique So you've been able to do all that And when it comes to putting this stone on top You ask your karigas to carve a stone out and then you build a ramp 8 miles long There's no shortage of human power There's no shortage of stones and rubble Human beings, rubble etc etc And you make 8 miles long ramp On this 8 miles long ramp You put the stick of the wood The logs of the wood You put the stone on top of it And you put it on top of it And you put the stone on top And you put it on the stone On the temple After that Making the ramp was one effort Then the second effort is removing the ramp So now you get down to The task of Removing the ramp As you remove the ramp it takes more time More money and this entire Process takes you 10 to 15 years Not more than that You have actually Used human power In a manner Which is In its most raw form Just a little while later They would be constructing St. Peter's Basilica In Rome Also requires Structures to go up So how do they work on that They work on it because There are limitations on how they will work There's a lot of habitation all around So you can't just make your 8 mile long ramp anymore You don't have so many People to construct the ramp To dismantle it To pull things up So what they do is they create a crane They use a screw mechanism To lift things up And they have created a machine Which can be used for hundreds of other tasks also In India Because you had a lot of manpower The manpower came cheap The You had adequate amount of time And there were enough resources There was abundance of land around There was abundance of forests around There was abundance of mud and rocks around You didn't have to worry about any of that So you actually After having taken A great leap forward You have stopped You have stopped just At the brink of becoming Modern science Because why you have stopped Just at the brink of becoming modern science Because you had a very comfortable life Just before that There was no reason for you to do something different This That you are not moving forward Is something that you also see in other areas of life People stopped trading That big trade Expeditions which had brought in all the wealth Which made you so rich Now you don't need to trade You will be given money All that you have to do is sit On your And become rich And rich The Arabs step in The Europeans step in And all of them they discover That They want to do this kind of labor work Was it just the Indians who were doing this No, the Chinese did the same The Chinese were in Approximately the same situation as Indians Rich land Full of people Happy people, cheap food, cheap clothing Cheap living They also around this time When they are at the top of the world When they are one of the richest society in the world They also stopped working The same way that the Indians have stopped working You had asked me that question about Poverty and wealth in India The figures for poverty and wealth in India are That During Aurangzeb's time Which is the richest that India ever was in its history There were 400 families Which controlled about 90% of the wealth of India 400 families The rest of India Controlled only 10% of the wealth And most of India did not have any money at all People were If you use contemporary terms People were poor People lived in huts People did not have pukka houses There were no pukka roads ever There were no pukka ports ever All those ports through which those Great trades are being carried out They are all temporary structures You used to go there, you used to put stones You used to build a platform for wood Or When you came from Arabia From Africa, you did your trade And then you simply left The monsoon came and took everything away The next season you came and you did the same You didn't even bother to construct roads anywhere Why? Because all that you needed was By the time of September when the rains had gone off You waited for 15 days more By the first of October it became possible For you to tread on the ground once again And the First caravan which went It made the road So broadly speaking you knew that Point A to point B this is how you have to go But those of you who have walked on Kachcha paths ever You know that when you walk on Kachche path Gradually it becomes white It becomes dark, it becomes hard For one season you have a good road The road starts deteriorating around the summer months When the cause of the bell And the cause of the bell The monsoon comes and everything shuts down We actually had a philosophy Chaturmaski philosophy During the monsoon don't move out For full four months in this country No one did anything It was one big Summer break, sorry, one big monsoon break You just sat back Home and you Just imagined yourself So what kind of a country was this We have some visual evidence Before us, this is King Ashoka With his queen And the servants, have a look at the image We know that this is King Ashoka Because soon after this particular image was found In Kanganahalli In Karnataka A similar image was found in Odisha On which it was written Ashokaraya Ashokaraya means King Ashoka And then You discovered that in a similar pose There is an image in Sachi Now the Sachi stupa has been made During Ashoka's time Ashoka is alive He made the Sachi stupa At Sachi because his favorite wife Was the daughter of a merchant Of Vidisha, Vidisha is the town next to Sachi So we know that Ashoka looks Like this And Ashoka is one of the Richest kings of his times Look at what he is wearing Doti Bhar ke kangan hain, haath mein Koi chapal khada hu kuch nahi Nange pair a bandha Sirpe usne jo Apna pagdi si dal rakhi hain Wo badi decorative hain Usme bohot saari jewellery hain Look at his wife The image On the left side She is just Covered with a simple cloth Dilkul jeena se kapda hain Bhar ke jewellery hain poore badan pe Look at the servants Around them The servants are dressed the same way The question that you asked The only difference is the amount of jewels That you are wearing Or the value of the jewels Everyone is wearing the same Everyone is eating the same food Everyone is doing the same A while later, a few thousand years later When the Europeans would come to India And they would start noticing They would say what is wrong with these guys This is the richest king in the world And what does he do He eats out of our mitti ka katora Mitti ke katore se raja kana kata hain How is that possible In Europe, that guy eats in black He eats in gold When there is a discovery of aluminium He starts eating in aluminium utensils The way you demonstrate that you are rich And powerful is to change your lifestyle You change your material culture This does not happen in India ever It does not happen in India till the 19th century When the European travellers come And say This palace does not have an alwarya King puts his cloth on his feet Queen puts her cloth on his feet And puts it on his feet There is no system to keep any cloth There is no system to keep any cloth I have already mentioned The rooms of your hostels All of our kings All of our kings used to live the same way You people People from the royal family According to the tradition of India They did not wear slippers They used to walk barefoot Nowadays, you do not have to wear slippers Or if you come to North India In the north India In the side of Punjab, Himachal When there is a lot of cold When there is a lot of heat Everyone wears shoes They do not wear slippers But if you come to Bombay or Maharashtra You get to know that people do not wear shoes Everyone wears slippers People who wear shoes They say I do not have a pair of shoes I do not have slippers There is no culture of the people The manner in which they lived This was a low demand culture It did not demand too much From the society around From the Khajana So it was possible For you as a society To continue to live The way you were living Even when the economy Was doing drastic ups and downs Economic ups and downs Did not hurt your way of living Food continued to remain Available in great abundance And it became possible For everyone to be very comfortable And satisfied with themselves Being comfortable and satisfied With yourself was something very problematic As far as I understand it It was not a good thing after a while Maybe it was a good thing in Ashoka's time But it definitely was not a good thing By Akbar's time or Aurangzeb's time And one of the things that I start noticing Is that in this whole system There is absolutely zero effort At creating systems There is absolutely zero effort At systematizing your trade At systematizing loans Bank loans and such like We've just seen that whole episode Of Malia running away with 9000 crore rupees Or whatever he has run away with And most of the bankers have said We heard him that he should do this And then the critics of the bankers Look, he promised you That he won't run with money If you don't work out like this You should have done due diligence Check them out properly Conducted investigations and on the basis of that Because you didn't do that This means that you are corrupt Maybe corruption was involved But I can assure you this is how Indians Did their trade most of the time This is how Indian businesses Were being organized Indian businesses never created Structures which would Enable them to function on a large scale They created bureaucratic systems And that enabled the company To dramatically transform The manner in which trade was being done In India Even the king did not Systematize his rule The king simply depended most of the time On the manner in which Chungi was being paid If 50% chungibyous ko aajati thi Bakki log goos woos mein khaajati thi He was happy with that Because even that 50% loss meant The richest kings in the universe So he really didn't have to bother about it When the Mughals come, Sher Shah Suri Comes in, he brings in the first modification He does the jama bandhi Of all agricultural Agricultural produce Akbar comes in, he systematizes it even more This results in a dramatic Jump in the revenue which The state is earning It results in more money with the king It enables the king to have a larger army But the big thing remains The state still is a useless entity As far as the rest of India is concerned Because the state really doesn't know Anything about What you or I as civilians are doing So we are relatively Immune from the Authority of the state Which in turn also means that As far as we are concerned As far as the people of India are concerned The state is ignorable You can ignore the state It really doesn't matter If you come from small towns From towns outside of Maharashtra You would have known how powerful The district magistrate is And the SP Sahab is And the Thanedar Sahab is You come to Bombay, the SP Sahab Thanedar Sahab really don't matter Because Like them, there are thousands of lakhs In Bombay city Where in Gujarat Where all the business works That is not the case If you go to Punjab, Haryana, UP Bihar, the northeast All that you have to say is Tamil Nadu, how many times have we done We are going in the car Chungiwala stops you to give money To go to 25 rupees The driver of the car says This is his car, don't touch it Chungiwala says Sorry, sir, go ahead You do that in Bombay He will catch you and send you to jail The state sets up revenue systems And then the historians of India start talking About this revenue system in a big way The agricultural reforms of Sher Shah Suri agricultural reforms of Akbar And then comes The English East India Company and it simply inherits The entire revenue system of the Mughals And the East India Company starts Collecting revenue East India Company we have already mentioned Is a bureaucratic company And when the East India Company starts collecting revenue We discover that the East India Company Results in East India Company revenue system Is put in place in 1793 The permanent settlement And by 1806 The entire agricultural system In Bengal and Odisha and Bihar has been destroyed The traditional agricultural system The traditional agricultural elite has been destroyed And then everyone wonders This is exploitation by the East India Company When you start looking at the details Of history it turns out that No, no, East India Company was not doing any exploitation The East India Company was just as much Wonders struck as to why there is a destruction Of agriculture going on And then it turns out that the East India Company Was following the agricultural rates That had been fixed by the Mughals The agricultural rates fixed by the Mughals Were being followed by the East India Company So the big question is Why does the agricultural rate fixed by the Mughals Does not destroy agriculture in Mughal times And why does it destroy in the times of the East India Company So you start looking at what were the Mughals doing It turns out that the agricultural rate of Mughals Was 10% taxed But it was 10% taxed It had to be given once in the past 5-6 years The Mughals had no record That you gave tax Neither did you have any interest in the army Nor did you have any interest in the treasure After 4-5 years You remembered that you didn't get taxed Let's go to this village You used to come to your village and say You didn't even give tax last year You didn't even give tax last year You didn't even give tax last year You didn't even give tax last year Now this time You will have to pay a tax of 6 years That 5 years plus One more year plus is fine Why are you doing this Why are you hitting the poor On the stomach Now everyone knows that You can't give 6 times tax Then let's have a negotiation Negotiation was on two levels One is that you take a little under the table I take a little But the real time negotiation was like this Now you Give the Dehuda tax 1.5 times Next time also give 1.5 times tax Give the next year also Till then Till the remaining tax The pending tax will not be fulfilled Today we will do the same What will happen in real time This time you are giving 1.5 times tax Next year you have to see Which next year this guy will come back To return the tax Remember This transfer The effective thing was That during Mughal times In pre British times A fellow paid only about 1% Tax in real terms 1% tax No tax More than that we are paying to the government of India Nowadays Simply because they bring in a systematic way Of tax collection It results in the destruction of agriculture Over there What was going on in India In India My submission is That as a consequence of that great geography That we have The great land that we lived in The great philosophy which said That don't hanker for anymore Be satisfied with what you have Now I can be satisfied with what I have If I already have quite a lot I put my hand here And I get a fruit to eat I just put my Hands behind my head And I am able to sleep comfortably I don't need to worry about anything That was great for serendipitous living Serendipitous experimentation But not hankering for anything Was creating a problem for us When we got in touch with the modern world When we got in touch with the European world The European world which was Modernizing after the period of the renaissance Which was developing modern science And technology We didn't know how to cope with that We were adjustable So in the first lecture We talked about how Indians Created newer systems for themselves Despite all the obstructions that The English company put before the Indians How Indians started coming on tops In the economy So it was not as if we didn't know how to do it But as far as creating systems was concerned We seemed to be lacking very seriously And that lack perhaps Continues to stay with us till today And the big thing is Those Absences Just may prove to be Serious obstacles to moving forward In doing anything At this stage in our life Where we stand in India today To move forward we need to understand How to operate on a large scale How to coordinate Thousands and thousands of people Some of us have been able to figure that out Infosys for example Has been able to figure it out TCS, Mahindra I was in a meeting with some Mahindra guys Just 2-3 days ago And they've got 700 offices Spread across the country And they are able to coordinate each of them Very easily today because they are following What they call a system If we don't Create systems for large scale operations Today we will come croppers This thing about startups The great man who comes up and 3 people Set up and they've got an idea And they work on it and they create something Which is unique and they are able to earn A few million dollars soon after that That is not the way to go That is the romantic way to go The way to go would be to be able to Create something which includes Hundreds and thousands of people Jack Ma is the way to go Steve Jobs is not the way to go Jack Ma is closer to our culture Closer to the way we do things This is what I would say today Next time that we meet We will be talking about How Indians participated In knowledge management Social management Why there were no social tensions in the society Or how they were sorted out Because those are the questions which will Put a break On how much we can imagine Today about moving forward in which direction Those are the questions which will Put a break on When we have the right imagination To coordinate our activities Still it is not possible for us To push forward Where we can get obstructions Threads for us Basically, SWOT analysis Are you familiar with the phrase SWOT SWOT, SWOT, SWOT Our strengths, our weaknesses, the opportunities And the threats to Indian society Today India is not that land mass That we had talked about earlier Today India is a legal entity Fairly well defined We interact with each other With all our differences With all our uniqueness And with all our absurdities And yet we have to live together And respect each other So how does one find a way out Next time that we meet We will talk a little more about that Thank you so much I think You know what I have already What on this systems approach Systems Sending a proper Organizational process And standardization And I think This is one thing Which Americans have left So much emphasis on Standardization of energy Which has helped them Go a long way In terms of mass production You know also Like for example At any kind of standard right from our switches Somebody has In this state, in this size This affects the whole Belfast industry And as a consumer It becomes expensive to me Today what I am using I cannot use it tomorrow Because I don't have a similar I cannot use good places So like systems And standardization I think are very important I think as a system We have not paid as much importance to it Now We are not paying importance to it Because we want to I think now we are paying importance to it Because we are under pressure Under pressure from the world For our things With WTO trips And all the whole thing We are under pressure to Apply to foreign countries And that's my perception That the other point was That we have been lacking in systems The Americans have been able to Effectively sort out This problem with systems With uniformities With homogeneity And it has enabled them to move forward And create large scale operations Yes this is absolutely true In India we have been We are being front barged You know what a front barge is You see the police are calling We are being front barged into That kind of modernity We would be talking about Small scale systems And large scale systems India was characterized by small scale systems India developed small scale systems That was great in working with small scale systems Our problem started With the East India company And said small scale systems Won't work anymore Large scale systems is what we need And we need to know what to do With large scale systems And in America there is a resistance to large scale systems Homogeneity In India we are completely comfortable When we can work in this way We can do it So next time let me meet We will be talking about this later Thank you very much How long have we been a content Society like in the past You said that we were content Whatever we had So we did not expand We were not being contented One is When we were talking about the textile industry I had said that the textile industry When it came up in the 1850s 1860s and 1870s It involved families The father, children And the wife will come to Bombay Or to Kanpur or to Madhpur And then work in the industry Now this obviously from the European point of view Makes sense The capitalist is exploiting everyone But in the Indian context we don't see Anyone reveling So the children are also working happily The wife is also working happily Even today she is also working happily The strikes started in the 1870s When external pressures come So I don't know whether I should use the word content Because when we are not getting Positive evidence We cannot strongly use it But we can see that this content Is not being expressed in negative ways We don't see complaints being made So if we don't see complaints being made Then at some point we would have to say People were more contented Because when we compare this with Europe And America of these times We discover that those guys are Complaining like that And that kind of complaint system We still don't have in India In India there was a big patch In which people would complain too much About the heating and everything But by law they don't The colleges you guys are going to I go to a college My university Students don't complain about anything Other than that In contrast In JNU, in Hyderabad and in Jadavpur They are campaigning To change the world To bring the rebellion out So that is what this content is What my students show me In Punjab University that is great contentment My small suspicion is Whenever you guys are located in your Respective colleges You are very contented Anyone else? Organizing and Having a system to work on You know having Working at a fixed entrance Somehow Absolutely This is a dilemma Between being creative Being part of the system Being a homogenized person Does it inhibit creativity? Does it inhibit individualism? Does it inhibit the individuals being expressive? This is a dilemma to which Till now neither the philosophers Nor the scientists have been able to Find a decent answer What I can assure you is this That there are plus points to be Obedient and there are plus points And there was an engineer A fellow called Pareto And one day Pareto decided that He had a lot of engineering and now He was working as a sociologist He was trying to understand society So he came up with this theory About the lines in the foxes Can we accept that Society is run by Foxes Pareto said no No it's not like this Sometimes you have to be like a fox Sometimes you have to be like a tiger You keep on switching Occasionally when it's not possible For you to switch You should be a sideline And those people who are capable of Behaving like this They come into space Think about the common spot Now Ghani is a great boy He was a great boy When he was 46 years old When he was in the army He was becoming an engineer So he was a captain When he was in university He became a professor When he was in business He would have been owning one of the biggest Businesses of his time And yet he doesn't know what to do with himself Look at Sudhbir Bahadur Sudhbir Bahadur is approximately the same age And he kicked out all his enemies He went to the state of Punjab He is the sole wholesale ruler Of Punjab Look at Takilesh Yadav Different strategies of work The same strategy Does not work in every situation You need to adjust yourself to New kind of ways of working This is something which requires Engineer Pareto to tell us And in case you ever get an opportunity Please do read Pareto's Books They are all available on the internet now And he would give you marvelous insights On how society functions And where obstructions can come before you Thank you so much